Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE

World Refugee Year

Mr. W. O. Clark: asked the Postmaster-General whether he will consider a reduction of postal charges on parcels to refugees during World Refugee Year.

The Assistant Postmaster-General (Miss Mervyn Pike): Much as I sympathise with the aims of the World Refugee Year, I am sorry that I cannot make this concession. There are very many charitable and benevolent causes which could make equally strong claims for favourable treatment.

Mr. Clark: Would my hon. Friend bear in mind that the World Refugee Year is a precedent for this country and that it seems rather hard, when people give clothes to refugees, that they should have to meet these postal charges? Would she look at this again to see whether some reduction can be made in postal charges on parcels from donors to clearing centres for the collection of parcels, because I do not think it would entail any additional expense on the Post Office.

Miss Pike: My hon. Friend says that this is a precedent. That is why we are very nervous about making this concession, because we believe that there will be a great many of these efforts in the future, such as World Hunger Year. We feel that it would be a very heavy expense on this country.

Local Advisory Committees

Mr. Ness Edwards: asked the Postmaster-General if, in pursuance of better relations with the public, he will overhaul the structure of the Post Office ad-

visory committees, providing an advisory committee for each head-postmaster's area, and exhibit the names of the members of such committees in the post offices within their areas.

The Postmaster-General (Mr. Reginald Bevins): The structure of local advisory committees was last reviewed as recently as 1956 when 62 committees were in being. There are at present 188. I should like to see more.
If the right. hon. Gentleman will indicate what change in structure he has in mind I will gladly review the position.

Mr. Edwards: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for that very helpful reply. Does he not think that in these days, when the association of administration with the public is extremely desirable, in each head-postmaster's area there should be an advisory committee which would keep a contact between the public and the Post Office? Will he consider revising the whole structure along these lines?

Mr. Bevins: Yes, indeed I do, and I should be very happy to confer with the right hon. Gentleman as to what he has in mind.

Oral Answers to Questions — TELEPHONE SERVICE

Ongar

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Postmaster-General what steps are being taken to reduce the waiting list for business and private telephones in the Ongar parishes of the Epping and Ongar rural district, having regard to its increase from 46 to 134 during 1959.

Mr. Bevins: There are fifteen exchanges in this district but the increase in the waiting list last year was mainly due to shortage of capacity at the Ongar exchange. The new automatic exchange is now well advanced and I expect it to be ready by September. As I said to my hon. Friend on 27th January, we are also providing additional exchange equipment and cables in other parts of the district.

Federal Telephone Exchange, Westminster

Mr. Lipton: asked the Postmaster-General if he will make a statement on the work carried out in the Federal Telephone Exchange in Great Peter Street, Westminster.

Mr. Bevins: The Federal Telephone Exchange is a manual exchange giving direct connections between Ministers and senior officials of the Service and Civil Departments. It gives them the same kind of facilities often provided for the top executives in a commercial organisation by its private branch exchange. It has no other functions.

Mr. Lipton: Why is it necessary to surround this exchange with so much secrecy? Do not the Government have enough to hide without adding this telephone exchange to the list?

Mr. Bevins: Far from there being any secrecy about this organisation, it has received far more publicity during the past week than any other part of the General Post Office.

Oral Answers to Questions — WIRELESS AND TELEVISION

Relay Companies

Mr. Woof: asked the Postmaster-General if he will consider issuing a circular to all television relay companies emphasising the conditions under which he licenses them to operate.

Mr. Bevins: Relay companies already has this information, but if the hon. Member has any particular point in mind I will gladly consider it.

Mr. Woof: Is the Minister aware that many people in the Dunston area of the Blaydon constituency are being misled by a company operating rediffusion there, in offering specially low terms to some subscribers to attract them to television? While recognising that the right hon. Gentleman may have no responsibility for such commercial dealings, may I point out that at least he provides them with a licence? In the public interest cannot he do something about it?

Mr. Bevins: I did not infer from the Question that that was the point which the hon. Member had in mind. In view of what he has said, I will take a note of it and see what I can do.

Mr. Mason: If the Minister is made conversant with the dealings of a firm which appears to be using a shady commercial practice, particularly performing under a licence from him, will he take

a dim view of it, especially when the licence comes up for renewal?

Mr. Bevins: I should first want to satisfy myself what the facts of the case were.

Dunston

Mr. Woof: asked the Postmaster-General his plans for improving the television service in Dunston and district with direct services, instead of allowing a sub-standard rediffusion service to develop.

Mr. Bevins: Neither the B.B.C. nor the I.T.A. has any present plans for improving reception in Dunston. It is well within the service area of B.B.C. and I.T.A. transmitters, but the district is low-lying and intervening hills spoil reception. In most cases the use of carefully adjusted multi-element aerials will overcome the local difficulties of B.B.C. reception.
With regard to the second part of the Question, there have been no local complaints to me about the relay service being given in the Dunston area.

Mr. Woof: Is the Minister aware that a great number of people in this area are paying licence fees for reception which is deplorable? Is there any reason why there should not be research into this matter to enable people to get value for money?

Mr. Bevins: I think that the hon. Member's Question refers to direct services instead of rediffusion services. As the House knows, the B.B.C. is pressing on with its satellite station scheme as fast as it can. It has no immediate plans for this part of the country, but I shall be very happy to draw its attention to this situation.

Mr. Ness Edwards: Is the Minister aware that in the shadow areas it is impossible for the non-wired service to give satisfactory reception? Will he consider, in conjunction with the B.B.C, whether a wired service should be started by the B.B.C. in areas of this type, which cannot otherwise be served?

Mr. Bevins: The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Woof) is complaining about the poor quality of the wired service provided by this company.

Television Advisory Committee (Technical Standards and Colour)

Mr. Mayhew: asked the Postmaster-General on what date instructions were given to the Television Advisory Committee to study and report on future technical standards and colour; and how often the Committee has met for this purpose since that date.

Mr. Bevins: In the first place during March, 1956, but certain questions which had been put to it were elaborated in 1959. The main Committee has met six times; the Technical Sub-Committee has met twenty-one times.

Mr. Mayhew: Is not four years a preposterous time to take for this report, however complicated the subject? Six meetings do not seem very many. What is the reason for the delay and what is the Minister doing about it?

Mr. Bevins: The reason for the delay is that the questions which are being considered by the Television Advisory Committee are immensely complicated. The bulk of the work has been carried out by the Technical Sub-Committee, of which the chairman of the main Committee is a member. I appreciate that the Committee has been a long time, but these are difficult questions. As I said to the House last week, however, I hope to have the report next month.

I.T.A. (Advertising Advisory Committee)

Mr. Mason: asked the Postmaster-General whether, in order to assist him in carrying out his duties under Section 4 of the Television Act, 1954, he will request the Independent Television Authority to make available to him the reports of its Advertising Advisory Committee.

Mr. Bevins: No, Sir.

Mr. Mason: Why not? Is not the Postmaster-General aware that the Section referred to in the Question states that:
… it shall be the duty of the Authority to consult from time to time with the Postmaster-General as to the classes and descriptions of goods or services which must not be advertised and the methods of advertising which must not be employed"?

Does the right hon. Gentleman receive reports from the Authority? If he does, why cannot the House be aware of them?

Mr. Bevins: Indeed, it is the duty of the Authority to consult me from time to time about the classes and descriptions of goods or services which must not be advertised—some goods and services are, in fact, prohibited from advertising on television—and to consult me on the methods of advertising which must not be employed. That is precisely what the I.T.A. does. The Question on the Order Paper, however, refers to the rather different question of whether the reports of the Advisory Committee should be made available to me.

Mr. Mason: Would it not be of assistance to the House and particularly to people who take an interest in this matter —because we are certain that the standards of commercial advertisements can be bettered—if the reports which are made available to the Postmaster-General could be made available in the Library of the House so that we may peruse them?

Mr. Bevins: I would not go as far as that. I can, however, say to the hon. Member that the Advisory Committee has recently been considering the rather vexed question, which was ventilated in the Chamber last week, of misleading advertisements, which, perhaps, include substitute products. The Advisory Committee will shortly be putting a report before the Authority which will be coming formally to me to consider.

Mr. Ness Edwards: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the whole population is involved in this matter? This is a question of protecting the population from what have been described as misleading advertisements. Will the Postmaster-General place in the Library of the House the report which he receives from the I.T.A. on this matter?

Mr. Bevins: No. I can give no such undertaking.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE

Automatic Gun Parts

Mr. Dodds: asked the Secretary of State for Air if he has yet been able to persuade Mr. Abraham Solomons to return the automatic gun parts, and on


what conditions; and, in view of the importance of mutilating all machine gun parts before disposing of them as scrap, what disciplinary action has been taken against those responsible for the sale of parts costing £40,000 for £26 to Mr. Solomons in the same condition as they were purchased for Service purposes.

The Secretary of State for Air (Mr. George Ward): I understand that Mr. Solomons has now sold the spares to a registered arms dealer. The sale of un-mutilated spares was not contrary to the Departmental regulations in force at the time, and there is therefore no question of disciplinary action.

Mr. Dodds: Can the right hon. Gentleman deny that the series of Answers which he has given on this matter is a classic example of how the Minister can seize upon a grain of truth which, when intelligently used, can give an entirely different impression of the real situation and so cover up a costly blunder? Will the right hon. Gentleman at least admit that there is no one in his Department who has been concerned with this transaction who has acted with the wisdom of Solomons?

Brain-washing Techniques

Mr. de Freitas: asked the Secretary of State for Air to what extent instruction in any of the techniques of brainwashing is given by or to men or women serving in his Department or in the Royal Air Force and its auxiliaries and reserves.

Mr. Ward: None, Sir.

Mr. de Freitas: Are we to take it that no instruction whatever is given to men in this Service in the technique of brainwashing so that they may be in a better position to resist attempts should they ever be captured?

Mr. Ward: There are two quite separate points. One is the so-called technique of brain-washing, with which we have nothing whatever to do. The other is normal instruction in resistance to interrogation. For this, we give lectures and films to aircrew so that they will know what they may expect.

Mr. Bowles: Can the Secretary of State deny that, during some invasion

escape exercises in Yorkshire during the middle of last year, pilots of the Royal Navy and of the Royal Air Force were interrogated by the Army?

Mr. Ward: They may have been interrogated, but they were not brain-washed.

Mr. Bowles: Were they not brainwashed in the sense that they were forced to sit on a stool, stripped naked, searched, and so on, and that this can go on for two or three hours? Is not the truth of the matter that the purpose is not to destroy the brains of our own pilots and others, but to get them ready to do this to an enemy in the future?

Mr. Ward: No. There is absolutely no question of that. All our interrogation training is given in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Naturally, however, we have pointed out to aircrew who are liable to capture that an unscrupulous enemy might not keep to the Geneva Convention and that they might expect violent treatment. That is all we warn them about.

Mr. K. Robinson: Following the first part of the Minister's supplementary answer, can he give a categorical assurance that the techniques described by Professor Kennedy in his recent lecture were never used by the Royal Air Force anywhere in the world during the last war?

Mr. Ward: Certainly, I can give that categorical assurance.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAYS

North-East and North Scotland

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Transport if he will make a comprehensive statement on the manner in which his economy drive has affected the efficiency of British Railways in the North-East of Scotland; and what are his present and future plans relating to rail transport in, to and from the North-East and North of Scotland within the capital reorganisation scheme.

The Minister of Transport (Mr. Ernest Marples): No, Sir. I have nothing to add on this matter to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 10th March. The Commission hopes to improve the overall efficiency of the rail services in, to and


from the North-East and North of Scotland by modernisation and by cutting out little-used stations and spur lines.

Mr. Hughes: Does not the Minister realise that the principle that he is applying to the railways mentioned in the Question conflicts with the principle which his own Government apply in the Highlands and Islands Shipping Services Bill, and that it is further evidence of the penalties which the Government are inflicting upon the people of the North-East of Scotland, where they want better transport, better population—or, rather, more population—and more industry and employment? Will the right hon. Gentleman address his mind to this aspect of the matter?

Mr. Marples: I am sorry that the hon. and learned Member thinks that they want better population. I do not think they need better representation. I am, however, bound to say that I disagree, as nearly always, with almost everything that the hon. and learned Member has said in his supplementary question.

Season Tickets (Period of Validity)

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: asked the Minister of Transport whether he will give a general direction to the British Transport Commission requiring it to extend the period of validity of all season tickets on the railways by as many days as trains have failed to run on the lines concerned, during the period of validity of the ticket, by reason of a strike.

Mr. Marples: No, Sir. I understand that it is the normal practice of the British Transport Commission in such circumstances to extend the period of validity of season tickets by the length of time for which travel facilities are not available.

Coal Wagons

Mr. Sylvester: asked the Minister of Transport if he is aware of the critical situation developing in many of the coal fields where pits are still working but are always on the verge of stopping owing to a shortage of empty railway wagons, and that this is causing particular difficulties for the National Coal Board at a time when its stock-piles are gradually being reduced; and, in view of the

urgency of this matter, if he will give a general direction to the British Transport Commission to take steps to alleviate this situation.

Mr. A. Roberts: asked the Minister of Transport if he will give a general direction to the British Transport Commission requiring it to provide a more adequate supply of railway wagons for collieries.

Mr. Marples: No, Sir. I understand from the Commission that difficulties arose from shortages in the supply of empty wagons to collieries and opencast sites in the early part of the year, but these have now been substantially overcome.

Mr. Sylvester: Is the Minister aware that this has caused great concern in the Yorkshire coal fields for many weeks? Hon. Members who represent mining areas have had representations not only from the Yorkshire Area of the National Union of Mineworkers but also from the Yorkshire Colliery Managers' Association. Will he try to see that we do not have a recurrence of this situation in the future?

Mr. Marples: This is a matter which ought to be put to the management of the British Transport Commission, but I will see that the Commission is given notice of the Question asked by the hon. Member. The Commission meets the National Coal Board daily at regional level and weekly at national level. This shows that they are trying hard to cooperate in order to overcome the difficulty.

Mr. Morris: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that everything has been done this winter to shift coal from South Wales and other areas by providing sufficient wagons and a sufficient number of workers on the railways, having regard to the vast stocks of coal which are accumulating at coal fields, the shortage of coal in the Lea Valley earlier this year and also in Pwllheli earlier this year, and the shortage in Swansea, on the edge of the coal field, only this weekend?

Mr. Marples: The trouble is greater in the Midlands than in Wales, including Pwllheli. I can assure the hon. Member that I personally saw Sir Brian Robertson about it.

Superannuitants

Dame Irene Ward: asked the Minister of Transport if he will give an assurance that any discussions with the British Transport Commission on the Guillebaud Report will include the position of railway superannuitants.

Mr. Marples: The position of railway superannuitants is primarily a matter for the British Transport Commission.
The Guillebaud Committee reported to the British Transport Commission and the railway unions jointly and the Report is being considered by them within the established negotiating machinery.

Dame Irene Ward: Having regard to the fact that the Guillebaud Report did not deal with railway superannuitants, has the British Transport Commission made any suggestions about dealing with them? Is my right hon. Friend aware that when I asked my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer about railway superannuitants yesterday he suggested that I should put down a Question to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport? Can my right hon. Friend explain to me why people in work are always entitled to have their claims considered while people who have done useful service on the railways are always neglected? It is absolutely monstrous.

Mr. Marples: I am aware of my hon. Friend's concern for the superannuitants, and I will see that Sir Brian Robertson and the Commission are made aware of her views.

Mr. Langford-Holt: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that, whether or not this matter is involved in the Guillebaud Report, it is certainly involved in the whole process of railway reorganisation with which my right hon. Friend has shortly to deal?

Mr. Marples: The unions and the British Transport Commission arranged for the Guillebaud Report, and the Report is to them and not to the Government. But there is no reason why either party should not bring this issue into the negotiations which are now proceeding.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROADS

M.1 (Footpaths and Bridleways)

Mr. C. Johnson: asked the Minister of Transport (1) how many public footpaths and bridleways were extinguished in the construction of the Birmingham motorway M.1;
(2) how many public footpaths and bridleways were diverted in the construction of the Birmingham motorway M.1.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay): Ninety-six footpaths and twenty-seven bridleways were diverted for part of their length. Only three footpaths were wholly stopped up, but another convenient route was provided in each case.

Mr. Johnson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that reply. Since other motorways are projected, will he give an assurance that special care will be taken to see that those motorways do not prevent the use of cross-country footpaths, as the cost involved is very small relative to the total cost of motorways as a whole?

Mr. Hay: Yes, Sir. The Special Roads Act, 1949, under which motorways are built, lays down the procedure for dealing with footpaths and bridleways. Quite shortly, the stopping up or diversion of those routes can be done only by order of the Minister, after full opportunity for objection has been afforded followed by a public inquiry, if necessary. Our experience with the M.1 indicates that that is sufficient safeguard.

Birmingham-Bristol Motorway

Sir P. Agnew: asked the Minister of Transport, in view of the fact that the route of the Birmingham-Bristol motorway was selected over ten years ago, whether he will, before finally deciding this route and the siting of its junction with the Ross Spur motorway near Strensham, consider the recommendations in a recent letter sent to him from the Council for the Preservation of Rural England to the effect that, in order to preserve local amenities in the vicinity of Bredon and the Avon Valley, the motorway north and south of Strensham


and the Ross Spur junction should be moved further west; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Marples: I have carefully considered the recommendations recently made by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. For the reasons which I explained in my letter of 10th March to my hon. Friend, I should see great difficulty in accepting its proposals.
I have nothing further to add to the replies I gave my hon. Friend on 25th February.

Sir P. Agnew: If preparations are now so far advanced—though work has not yet begun—that great expense would be entailed, offsetting any saving in changing the road and also considerable delay before a new route could be devised, will my right hon. Friend direct the skill and energies of his Department to seeing how far the road south of the proposed junction could be deflected to the west in order to save something of the amenities of an incomparable valley in England?

Mr. Marples: A compulsory purchase order was published on 4th March. If there are any objections to it, there will be a public inquiry. As I shall have to make the final decision on the compulsory purchase order, I think that it would be better if I did not commit myself any further at this stage.

Mr. Ridley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there are as many objections to the proposed motorway passing to the west as there are to its passing through my hon. Friend's constituency?

Mr. Marples: In this Ministry I find that there are conflicting claims. One is to build roads quickly and the other is not to take any ground for the roads.

Civil Engineering Contracts (Safety Officers)

Sir S. Storey: asked the Minister of Transport if, when making grants to local authorities towards the cost of civil engineering projects, he will make it a condition of the grant that the local authority will require the contractor for the project to appoint a fully qualified officer responsible for the safety of the workers employed thereon.

Mr. Marples: I do not think it would be appropriate to make this a condition of grant. The safety of workers on such projects will be covered by the new regulations under the Factories Acts which my right hon. Friend, the Minister of Labour, is proposing to make shortly.

Sir S. Storey: While the proposed extension of the Factories Acts to constructional engineering is a step in the right direction, does not my right hon. Friend feel that on some major projects a whole-time safety officer is needed? Does he not think that if such an officer had been appointed earlier for the Barton Bridge, we might have avoided two accidents and saved six lives?

Mr. Marples: I am certain that local authorities concerned will bear in mind the recommendations of the jury at the recent Barton Bridge inquest to provide constant supervision by a competent representative of the contractor who must be approved by the highways authority engineer, and it is on that person that responsibility must rest.

Sir S. Storey: If that is so, why does not my hon. Friend make it a condition of giving a grant?

Mr. Ellis Smith: In view of the years of delay in issuing satisfactory regulations, will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to consult his right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour with a view to dealing with this as a matter of extreme urgency?

Mr. Marples: I am already in touch with my right hon. Friend. In view of my experience in private life before I came into public life, I can assure the hon. Member that I have the matter very much in mind.

Steeton-Silsden Road

Mr. Worsley: asked the Minister of Transport why it is necessary to close road A.6034 between Steeton and Silsden for 18 out of 20 days before Easter; and why no consultations took place with Silsden Urban District Council before this decision was taken.

Mr. Hay: I understand that the Yorkshire (West Riding) County Council proposes to close this road under the powers granted to highway authorities by the Road Traffic Act, 1930. The purpose


of the closure is to enable British Railways to repair points and signalling equipment at a level crossing. Advance copies of the notices to be posted on the highway were sent to the Silsden Urban District Council on 3rd February.

Mr. Worsley: Is not nearly three weeks a totally unreasonable time for a level crossing to be closed? Does not my hon. Friend realise that it is absolutely vital for the small town of Silsden that the crossing should be opened as soon as possible? Will he give instructions for speeding up the operation?

Mr. Hay: No, Sir. I am afraid that we have no power to order the speeding up of this operation, even if it were desirable to do what my hon. Friend requires. The local highway authority is the county council, which is fully aware of the difficulties caused to traffic, because in the notice which I mentioned it gave details of alternative routes which would be available.

Reflecting Kerbs

Mr. Woodburn: asked the Minister of Transport the estimated extra cost per mile of reflecting kerbs compared with the ordinary type; and what approximate extra percentage this would add to the cost per mile of new road.

Mr. Marples: I have nothing to add add to the reply my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland gave to a similar Question yesterday.

Mr. Woodburn: Will the Minister personally look into this matter, because anything which will add to safety on the roads at such negligible cost should be adopted immediately? Several types of these reflecting kerbs are available and they cost practically nothing extra, while giving extra visibility in the worst conditions, thus being a great contribution to safety.

Mr. Marples: Not only the capital cost, but the effectiveness has to be considered. The value of a reflecting kerb is limited by the difficulty of keeping the surface clean.

Mr. Woodburn: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that is not a problem? Is he aware that the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research has tested this device and has

shown that it keeps clean and is almost as effective for reflecting light as the studs?

Mr. Marples: The Road Research Laboratory is looking into the matter at the moment and I am awaiting its further report.

Mr. Woodburn: asked the Minister of Transport whether he has considered the Reports of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, RN 1689/ PJFW GCW, 1952, and RN/2993/AWC Mar., 1957, reporting that the use of reflecting kerbs can be made visible at night up to 100 yards; and whether he will specify, as a measure of road safety, kerbs with a normal night visibility of a minimum of 80 yards for all new roads.

Mr. Marples: I have nothing to add to the reply which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland gave to a similar Question by the right hon. Member yesterday.

Mr. Woodburn: Will the right hon. Gentleman not, as he appears to have done, make up his mind before he has seen the Report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research? I understood that he was a very enterprising Minister and willing to hear all the evidence before making up his mind, but he has just given a decision before hearing all the evidence.

Mr. Marples: No, I did not. I did not say that my mind was made up. I said that not only capital cost, but maintenance and keeping the surface clean had to be considered. The Road Research Laboratory is now carrying out field trials, and no decision will be made until the results of those field trials are known.

Mr. Woodburn: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in Scotland these kerbs are working very effectively?

Mr. Marples: Some things work in Scotland which do not always work in England in the same way.

Lower Addiscombe Road, Croydon (Pedestrian Crossing)

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: asked the Minister of Transport his reasons for opposing the request of


Croydon Council for a pedestrian crossing in Lower Addiscombe Road, by Ashling Road.

Mr. Hay: There are already two pedestrian crossings on a 400-yard stretch of Lower Addiscombe Road which covers its junction with Ashling Road. Multiplication of pedestrian crossings is no necessary guarantee of safety; a better solution, which we have asked the council to consider, would be the re-siting of the existing crossings, with pedestrian guard-rails to ensure their maximum use.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Does not my hon. Friend realise how frustrating it is to a local authority when its proposals in these matters are so consistently turned down, and how disturbing it is to local opinion when these proposals are backed, as in this case, by the finding of the coroner at a recent inquest? Is my hon. Friend satisfied that more authority could not be delegated to local highways committees?

Mr. Hay: No, Sir; these are extremely difficult questions and we have to be guided by the advice of our divisional road engineers, who are highly qualified and who know the district mentioned. I am not always certain that the views of the local authority are necessarily the best in these cases, but in this instance it would be as well if our suggestion to the council could be very carefully considered.

Government Buildings (Parking Facilities)

Mr. Webster: asked the Minister of Transport what consultations he has had with other Government Departments regarding the creation of adequate parking facilities where space exists in close proximity to their buildings.

Mr. Marples: I have consulted with my colleagues wherever it seemed likely that space adjoining or associated with Government buildings in London might conveniently be used for off-street parking. Some of the special Christmas car parks resulted from such consultation. The provision of staff parking space for Government offices is the concern of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Works.

Mr. Webster: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in particular, the Air Ministry building in Whitehall Gardens

appears to be surrounded by a vast amount of space, some of which could be given up to add to the car-parking facilities, and that, in general, it is hoped that Government Departments will play their part in assisting in this vital problem?

Mr. Marples: That is a problem for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Works, and I will bring that supplementary question to his notice.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRANSPORT

Driving Offences

Mr. Mathew: asked the Minister of Transport if he will take steps so that the courts may have the power in their discretion to require persons convicted by them of drunken driving or other serious driving offences to display a distinctive yellow and black diamond sign on the windscreen of any car such persons may drive within up to five years of such conviction.

Mr. Marples: No, Sir. I am satisfied that the penalties for driving offences prescribed in the Road Traffic Acts are adequate.

Mr. Mathew: Does not my right hon. Friend consider that in the worst cases of dangerous driving and drunken driving this would act as a deterrent at least as effective as the alternative of imprisonment, while being far cheaper for the taxpayer?

Mr. Marples: No. If there has been dangerous driving or drunken driving, the right thing to do is to disqualify the man from driving. There is no point in allowing him to go on the road and display his guilt publicly. It is better to withdraw his licence.

Night Driving (Headlights)

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the Minister of Transport if he will investigate the practices of lorry drivers and others with regard to flashing and dipping of headlights at night; and if he will arrange for those practices which have accepted meanings in relation to road safety to be described in an appendix to the Highway Code.

Mr. Marples: I doubt whether signals of this kind are likely to be understood


if used by an inexperienced driver, and I do not think that they could safely be included in the Highway Code.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Will my right hon. Friend consider this. These secret and cabalistic signs will continue to be used, and we ought to come to terms with them. The other day a motorist thought he had the "come on" signal. He went on and had an accident and was then told by the other driver, "You fool, I gave you the 'keep back' signal".

Mr. Marples: That is all the more reason why they should not go in the Highway Code. The National Road Safety Committee of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents felt that the practice was not only objectionable but indeed dangerous.

Oral Answers to Questions — SHIPPING

Nuclear Propulsion

Mr. Awbery: asked the Minister of Transport what steps have been taken to bring before the forthcoming Safety at Sea Conference the question of special regulations which will become necessary with the operation of nuclear-powered ships; and if he will propose that the regulations ultimately laid down shall have international application.

Mr. Marples: The proposals made in the Report of the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear-powered Merchant Ships (Cmnd. 958) will be placed before the Conference.
The proposals are in the form of draft recommendations to Governments. The Committee took the view, with which I agree, that it would be premature to seek at this stage to lay down firm international regulations.

Mr. Awbery: Is the Minister aware that within the next two or three years we will have a large number of ships propelled by nuclear power? Is it not necessary, therefore, that we should have regulations to govern them? When the regulations are introduced will they be carried out internationally, and not like the three-mile limit, the six-mile limit and the twelve-mile limit for fishing?

Mr. Marples: I cannot agree that there will be a large number of nuclear-powered ships on the oceans in two or

three years' time. I am certain that there will not be. As the Committee itself considers it desirable to wait for further inquiries before putting these into precise international rules, I am sure that the best thing to do is to agree with it in that respect.

Mr. Rankin: asked the Minister of Transport what progress he has made in his discussions on the recommendations of the committee on the safety of nuclear-powered ships; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Marples: I have asked for the comments of the representative organisations of the shipping, shipbuilding and port industries, and these are now being received. I do not propose to come to any final decisions on the Committee's recommendations until they have been discussed at the International Conference on the Safety of Life at Sea, which is to meet in London in May.

Mr. Rankin: While the right hon. Gentleman is thinking about those things, will he also remember that the berthing of nuclear-powered ships near heavily populated areas is fraught with danger unless special precautions are taken? Will he consider ensuring that special disciplinary clauses are inserted in the articles of agreement of these ships?

Mr. Marples: I will bear that point in mind after the Conference has been held.

Flag Discrimination

Mr. Awbery: asked the Minister of Transport if he is aware that flag discrimination against British shipping still continues; what means he is using, in collaboration with the shipping industry and other countries, in opposing such practices; and what machinery has been established for continuing consultation on this matter with the United States of America and other European Governments.

Mr. Marples: Yes, Sir. I am well aware that flag discrimination is one of the most serious problems now confronting British shipping, and Her Majesty's Government oppose it by whatever means are considered most effective in each case.
We are in constant consultation with other European Governments through the Maritime Transport Committee of


O.E.E.C., on which the United States is represented. In addition, I hope that informal arrangements for continuing talks between the European countries and the United States on these and other shipping problems will shortly be established.

Mr. Awbery: This is the most vital industry in the country. A few years ago, 50 per cent. of the shipping of the world was controlled by this country. The figure is now 17 per cent. These regulations are necessary, and it is vital that the nations concerned should consult each other with a view to bringing about uniformity in the running of our ships.

Mr. Marples: I wish that consultation was able to get rid of flag discrimination. I should be very pleased if it was, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that far more than consultation is needed. It is very difficult, patient, uphill work because we have very few cards to play. We rely on free trade, and others have the power to restrict us.

Mr. Peyton: Will my right hon. Friend consider urging the British shipping industry to ventilate its problems a bit more sharply than it does, and make public opinion both here and in America very much more sharply aware of its problems? Perhaps he will suggest, as an example, that our industry should follow the example of the flag of convenience owners who employ a vast hoard of highly-skilled public relations people who do not hesitate, and who do not lose an opportunity, to put their point of view.

Mr. Marples: I shall certainly put that view to the shipping owners in this country, but it is much easier to define the problem than to define remedial measures.

Mr. Shinwell: What does the right hon. Gentleman mean by taking effective measures? Does he regard the association with O.E.E.C. as effective? Is he not aware that the principal offender in this problem is the United States? If the United States Government responded to the request made by the European and other maritime nations, they could bring pressure to bear on the shipping interests of the United States to end this deplorable state of affairs.

Mr. Marples: I do not dissent from that. I disagree in a friendly way with

what the United States is doing. What I have said is that it is difficult to propose effective action to make the United States not indulge in the discrimination in which it does indulge. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that if he has any constructive suggestions to make I shall listen to them with a readiness and willingness not always manifest in some other quarters.

Mr. Rankin: asked the Minister of Transport if he has yet received a resolution from the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom expressing concern over discrimination against British shipping by foreign Governments, and appealing for international agreement on equal trading opportunities; and what reply he proposes to make.

Mr. Marples: Yes, Sir. I have received copies of a resolution passed by the Chamber of Shipping at its Annual General Meeting on 25th February, 1960. I am in constant touch with the shipping industry concerning flag discrimination, which is certainly one of the most serious problems now confronting British shipping.

Mr. Rankin: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that at the annual meeting of the Chamber of Shipping, Mr. Hugh Hogarth, the new vice-president, stated that the shipping industry could no longer stand alone? In view of that public declaration, is it not time that the right hon. Gentleman himself, as the responsible Minister, got amongst them to find out why they cannot stand alone, and to see what he can do to hold them up?

Mr. Marples: I was amongst them yesterday, asking them for their suggestions as to which way I could help.

s.s. "Empire Fowey"

Commander Donaldson: asked the Minister of Transport if, in considering the sale of the Government-owned ship s.s. "Empire Fowey", he will restrict such sale to British shipping interests solely.

Mr. Marples: I have nothing to add to the reply which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) on Wednesday, 9th March.

Commander Donaldson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that if the situation posed in the Question is not kept in the mind of the Minister, and if this ship should be disposed of to some other source, other than British interests, it will work precisely against his Answer to an earlier Question regarding flag-of-convenience owners. The shipping industry of this country—not only owners but those who go down to the sea in ships—is concerned about the principle involved in this. Will he give it his earnest consideration before coming to a conclusion?

Mr. Marples: Tenders have not yet been received. I think that we had better wait until they are. The Government's refusal to sell to foreign interests would not necessarily benefit shipping owners in this country, since it would be open to foreign owners to buy elsewhere, which they could do quite easily with the large surplus tonnage available in the world.

Mr. Shinwell: Does not the right hon. Gentleman, with the limited experience —and I say that in a friendly fashion— he has acquired on shipping affairs since he occupied his honourable position, realise that this is one of the most serious problems that has faced the shipping industry of this country for many years; namely, the sale of old ships to foreign owners because these ships enter into competition with British-owned vessels? It is no use him running away from the problem by suggesting that foreign owners would buy ships elsewhere. This is a second-hand vessel. Surely he could restrict its sale to British owners if they desired it, and, if not, he could break up the vessel.

Mr. Marples: I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I think that this is a serious problem. That is why I saw an ex-president of the Chamber of Shipping about it yesterday, knowing full well that the right hon. Gentleman would be in his place and would take this matter most seriously. I can assure him that the position is not as easy as that. I was told yesterday that it is a question of what type of ship it is, because a tramp vessel is not the same as a liner, and so on. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I have it very much in mind, and if I think it is detrimental to British shipping it will not be done.

Dame Irene Ward: Referring to my right hon. Friend's Answer to the original Question, may I ask him to bear in mind that leadership would be helpful in this matter? If we want to indicate to the Americans what we think about their antics, would it not be a good thing for us to give a lead? Leadership from Great Britain would do a great deal in the world today.

Mr. Marples: I will bear my hon. Friend's remarks very much in mind.

Mr. Shinwell: asked the Minister of Transport what tenders have been received from British shipowners for the purchase of s.s. "Empire Fowey".

Mr. Marples: The advertised closing date for submitting tenders is not until 1st April and none has yet been received.

Mr. Shinwell: When tenders are received by the right hon. Gentleman's Department, will he give serious consideration to selling this old vessel to British rather than to foreign owners? If he is not fully acquainted with the subject, will he advise his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to revert to the old practice of a Ministry of Shipping, and hive off shipping from his Department?

Mr. Marples: I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will listen with interest to anything that the right hon. Gentleman ever has to say. I will certainly have every consideration in mind when the tender is received.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

South Uist Guided Missile Range (West German Personnel)

Mr. Malcolm MacMillan: asked the Minister of Defence to what extent and in what numbers West German military personnel are to be trained on the South Uist guided missile range.

Mr. Ward: I have been asked to reply.
We informed the N.A.T.O. military authorities last year of our readiness to make the Hebrides range available for firing practice for a small number of N.A.T.O. missile units, but our offer has not so far been taken up by any member country.

Mr. MacMillan: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is widespread and growing resentment and dismay at the prospect of bringing General Speidel's jackbooted troopers into this country, when we were defending ourselves against them not so many years ago? Is he further aware that this resentment is not lessened by the fact that the proposal involves one of the most patriotic constituencies in this country, which suffered more, proportionately, than any other part of the British Empire? Can the right hon. Gentleman give us an assurance that this proposal will not be tolerated?

Mr. Ward: As I said, this offer has been made to all N.A.T.O. countries and not just to Western Germany. It is entirely in accord with the principles of interdependence that one N.A.T.O. country should make available to other N.A.T.O. countries any spare capacity it has on its training ranges. If Western Germany, as a member of N.A.T.O., makes a request for the use of this range, we shall certainly give it sympathetic consideration.

Mr. Fletcher: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that that is not the end of the question? There are considerable objections, based on very strong grounds, to providing any bases in this country for the training of any German troops. Will he please bear that fact in mind?

Mr. Ward: There is no question of setting up a German base of any kind. Any foreign units which practise on the British range would do so only occasionally and for short periods.

Bases (West German Personnel)

Mr. Warbey: asked the Minister of Defence what arrangements he has made, or is contemplating, to make British bases available to the German Army and Air Force.

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of Defence if he will make a statement about the latest negotiations over German air, missile and Army bases in Great Britain.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Minister of Defence to what extent he proposes to provide bases for the German Army in Great Britain.

Mr. Ward: I have been asked to reply.
When the Federal German Minister of Defence visited this country in the spring of last year he gave informal notice of a possible German interest, within the context of N.A.T.O., in establishing storage depôts at ports in this country for the support of the German elements in the N.A.T.O. forces. We were prepared to examine any specific proposals, but none has been put to us.

Mr. Warbey: Is the Secretary of State aware that he has not answered that part of my Question relating to training facilities for the Luftwaffe? As there have been reports of this, will he answer that part of the Question, and recognise that a deep feeling of repugnance exists in this country at the idea of Luftwaffe units once more flying over the territory of Britain? Will he give an assurance that the Government will now take action, through N.A.T.O., to ensure that a halt is called to further German rearmament, and that steps are taken to prevent the spread of German forces over Western Europe, by means of disengagement and disarmament?

Mr. Ward: The question of facilities for the training of German personnel in this country is a separate one, which is the subject of Question No. 48. The question of supply depôts at ports, for the support of the German Army, arises from the general problem of maintaining supply sources across the Atlantic in war time. Nothing specific has so far been put forward.

Mr. Gower: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there seams to be a good deal of misunderstanding about this subject? Is he aware that there is evidence that some people who ought to know better think that independent German forces are to be used? To that extent cannot the utmost publicity be given to the fact that this is not a resuscitation of independent German forces?

Mr. Ward: I have tried to make it clear that there is nothing remotely resembling a German military base in this country.

Mr. Wade: Earlier the Minister used the word "interdependence". Would he qualify this? Do we understand he is suggesting that one member of N.A.T.O. might make arrangements on its own


with another member of N.A.T.O. for bases, supply depôts and so on? Or is it to be co-ordinated by N.A.T.O. and only through N.A.T.O.?

Mr. Ward: Naturally, the original proposal will be discussed by N.A.T.O. and afterwards, presumably, it will be put forward as a specific proposal to us.

Mr. Manuel: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman recognises the need to be completely open and above-board about the question of German bases or troops coming to Scotland or elsewhere in Britain. Is he aware that there will be complete repugnance to bases of the character or soldiers of the units he describes coming to Scotland? Already we are getting far too many letters from our constituents on the subject, and I am sure that many of my hon. Friends who represent constituencies in Scotland will agree with me.

Mr. Allaun: Is it not obvious that facilities for Germany in Britain would further encourage the German militarists, who are fast becoming the strongest military Power in Europe and hankering for the seizure of their lost provinces, which would precipitate a third world war?

Mr. Ward: The point is—

Dame Irene Ward: Hit him hard.

Mr. Ward: —that the German Army is using certain equipment of British origin and therefore it is not unreasonable that we should train a small number of German personnel to understand, operate and maintain that equipment.

Mr. S. Silverman: Will not the right hon. Gentleman make an effort to realise that, quite apart from differences between the political parties, and what the politicians and generals may have to say about it, there is among members of the public in this country—sometimes among those with not very strong political interests—a very strong feeling that to train German troops in this country would be to make a mockery of all this country stood for in two world wars?

Mr. Ward: I am quite certain that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence, for whom I am answering, is by no means insensible to the feelings which the hon. Gentleman has expressed. On the other hand, we must remember

that Federal Germany is a member of N.A.T.O. and the policy of Her Majesty's Government has been expressed as interdependence between partners in the N.A.T.O. alliance.

Defence White Paper, 1957 (Paragraph 12)

Mr. S. Silverman: asked the Minister of Defence whether paragraph 12 of the Defence White Paper of 1957 still represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Ward: I have been asked to reply. Yes, Sir.

Mr. Silverman: Does that mean that it is still the policy of Her Majesty's Government to seek to repel an attack with conventional arms not merely by using nuclear weapons, but by being the first to use them? Is that not what paragraph 12 says quite clearly? Is the right hon. Gentleman really saying that that represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government today?

Mr. Ward: With respect, I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to a different paragraph from that mentioned in the Question on the Order Paper—

Mr. Silverman: No.

Mr. Ward: —because paragraph 12 of the 1957 White Paper deals with the question of providing adequate protection for the people of this country against the consequences of an attack with nuclear weapons. It certainly remains the case that at present there is no means of providing full and adequate protection under nuclear attack. But that does not mean that there is not a great deal which can be done to mitigate the effects of such an attack, and so it is the purpose of the Government's civil defence policy and planning to do whatever we can to mitigate it.

Mr. Silverman: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer my supplementary question? I am sorry if I have contributed to any misunderstanding. The point of my question was whether it is still the Government's policy to resist an attack by conventional weapons by using nuclear weapons and by using them first?

Mr. Ward: That does not arise out of the original Question.

Royal Air Force Senior Officers (International and Inter-Service Organisations)

Mr. de Freitas: asked the Minister of Defence how many Royal Air Force officers of the rank of air commodore and above are serving on the staff of international or inter-Service organisations.

Mr. Ward: I have been asked to reply.
There are fourteen such officers in posts paid for by the Ministry of Defence.

Mr. de Freitas: Is the Minister aware that these figures do not support the argument justifying the increased proportion of air officers in the Royal Air Force which is now as great as 240 in number? Will he bring to the attention of himself, in his other capacity as Secretary of State for Air, that it is no argument to justify the top-heavy structure of the Royal Air Force today?

Mr. Ward: May I continue to wear the hat I am wearing at the moment— that of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence—and reply that I gave the Answer which was asked for by the Question, the number of officers for whom the Ministry of Defence has financial responsibility. There are many other officers in inter-Service organisations who are the financial responsibility of the Service Departments.

DISARMAMENT

Mr. Healey: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will now make a statement on his discussions with other Governments concerning proposals to be put forward by the Western Governments at the 10-Power Committee on Disarmament.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Robert Allan): Yes, Sir. Five-Power agreement was reached on a Western Plan for comprehensive disarmament. The text of this Plan will be published as a White Paper.

Mr. Healey: Can the Joint Undersecretary explain why the ban on tests of atomic weapons does not figure anywhere in the Western Plan for disarmament? Can he assure the House that it

is still the policy of Her Majesty's Government to reach such an agreement with the Soviet Union and the United States and to seek the adherence of other members of United Nations at the earliest possible moment?

Mr. Allan: Yes, I think I can give that assurance. This agreement would come out of the other Geneva Conference at present being held.

Mr. P. Noel-Baker: Will the Joint Under-Secretary of State propose to his right hon. and learned Friend that in the White Paper should be included the text of what the Foreign Secretary said in the United Nations Assembly last September?

Mr. Allan: I will ask my right hon. and learned Friend to consider that.

ISRAEL (ARMAMENTS)

Mr. Foot: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what requests Her Majesty's Government have received for the sale or transfer of rockets or other arms to the Government of Israel.

Mr. R. Allan: In the view of Her Majesty's Government, as a matter of general principle, it is not in the public interest to disclose whether or not requests for arms have been received from foreign Governments, nor to state the extent, if any, to which particular requests will be met.

Mr. Foot: Will the Minister give an assurance that such requests as this would not in any circumstances be met before the House had had an opportunity of discussing the matter?

Mr. Allan: I could not give such a blanket assurance as that.

Mr. Foot: Why not?

MIDDLE EAST (BALANCE OF ARMS)

Mr. Healey: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to what extent it is Her Majesty's Government's policy to seek the co-operation of the Soviet Government in maintaining a balance of arms among Middle Eastern countries, as laid down in the Tripartite Declaration.

Mr. R. Allan: In the view of Her Majesty's Government, it is the duty of the great Powers to show restraint in the supply of arms to the countries of the Middle East. This view is well known to the Government of the Soviet Union,

Mr. Healey: Can the Joint Undersecretary tell the House whether the Government are in negotiation with the Soviet Union in order to reach some formal agreement on this matter? Surely, as was pointed out by my hon. and learned Friend in his supplementary question, it is highly undesirable that the countries of the Middle East should waste their money piling up armaments when agreement between the great Powers might make this unnecessary?

Mr. Allan: We are fully aware of the dangers of an arms race in the Middle East or anywhere else. That is why we attach such particular importance to the 10-Power Conference opening in Geneva.

Mr. Healey: Can the Joint Under-secretary say whether the Government are in negotiation with the Soviet Union, the United States and France to obtain agreement on this matter? Declarations of intent are surely irrelevant here.

Mr. Allan: There are no negotiations on this matter at the moment.

Orders of the Day — CONSOLIDATED FUND BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

3.30 p.m.

Mr. B. T. Parkin: I rise to avail myself of the traditional right of a back bencher, when Supply is being discussed, to raise any grievance related to the administration and connected with the affairs of the area which he represents.
I do so on this occasion for two reasons, first, that for some time now my experience has been that in the area that I represent there have been a number of cases of breakdown of the administrative work of the Welfare State which call for a greater co-ordination, which call for an improved system of welfare work to eliminate overlapping and to eliminate the waste which arises when a citizen's problem is dealt with by one Department and could have been solved only in collaboration between several Departments.
The second reason I rise today is that last week I put a Question to the Home Secretary to which the Answer was unsatisfactory and I would have been justified in seeking leave to raise it at the earliest opportunity. The Question was whether the Home Secretary would supply, in his future reports on the number of children in child care, a much fuller return and a breakdown of figures. I asked him, in particular, if he would
give the most recent available figures, per thousand, of child population for the Borough of Paddington and, separately, for each ward of the borough; and how these compare with the national average.
The right hon. Gentleman started by saying that he would
not feel justified in asking the councils of counties and county boroughs generally…." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th March, 1960; VoL 619, c. 39–40.]
and that he understood from the London County Council that the information relating to children in care, requested in the second part of the Question, was not available. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let there be a little less noisy conversation. That would reduce the strain on all concerned.

Mr. Parkin: That was a very odd reply by the Home Secretary, for two reasons. The first was that I was myself discussing these figures with the leader of the London County Council in a room upstairs in this building only two or three weeks ago. It is a little unconvincing to be told that they are not available. The second reason is that I am puzzled that the Home Secretary himself does not display a more restless interest in the breakdown of these particular figures, because I know that when he is investigating the question of delinquency he is very interested in compiling a map of the areas in which these troubles arise.
With permission, I shall now give the Home Secretary the information which he was unable to extract from the London County Council. The Home Secretary has already told us, in his annual return, the average number of children in care. That means those whose guardianship is transferred from their parents to local authorities. It will be clear why I am asking this question, because it forms a useful guide to the health of a community if we have the statistics of the number of family breakdowns in an area and have something on which to work when examining social problems of the area.
The Home Secretary told us last year that the figure for England and Wales was 5·2 per 1,000. He also told us that the figure for London was 11·5 per 1,000. The figure for Paddington, at a close estimate, is 22 per 1,000. That is to say, London has twice the national average and Paddington has twice the London average.
I should have thought this would be something which would interest the Home Secretary so much that he would ask for the further figures. The further figures are extremely interesting, and extremely alarming. In one ward of South Paddington the figure is as high as 115 per 1,000 of the child population. I think that I am justified on this occasion in calling the attention of the House to the fact that in certain areas in London one child in nine is no longer in the care of its parents; it is in the care of the London County Council. In one ward in my constituency the number is exactly twenty times the national average. A child who lives in Harrow Road, South, Ward, in North Paddington, is twenty times as likely to suffer from a breakdown of his family, so that he has

to be taken away, as he would be if he lived elsewhere in the country.
In the rich and prosperous wards of Paddington, the Lancaster Gate wards, east and west, and in the Hyde Park ward, the Home Secretary will find that the figure is still four or five times the national average. To me, the most interesting figure of all is that in the ward next door to the Harrow Road, South ward—Harrow Road, South being part of the tenement house area very much like the areas in Westbourne Park stretching to Willesden, and so on—in the Queen's Park ward, which is an estate of artisans' houses built in 1881 without damp courses, with outside lavatories and no bathrooms, the poorest part of my constituency, the number is 13 per 1,000. That establishes that this is not a question of financial poverty.
There are some other factors, for in the Queen's Park ward we have a settled community. In the very next street we have this situation where the community is broken down and one child in ten has lost any sense of belonging. Those of my colleagues who have never given this matter a thought may well be shocked when they realise what is implied by these figures. When I think of the Derbyshire village from which my forebears came, the material poverty which I recollect there, I reflect that, bad as conditions were, we did not have that kind of breakdown—we belonged to something.
I look at the annual return and see that Derbyshire is proud of the fact that its figure is only 2·9 per 1,000 of the child population. This does, indeed, call for further research by the Home Secretary's Department and the Home Secretary himself as being the responsible Minister on the Government benches for the Welfare State.
While looking at these things, the right hon. Gentleman might have a look at the training of child care officers and inquire why, in Lancashire, which has only about one-third of the number of children which London has, there are half as many child care officers more in proportion. How are his training schemes going on? The Home Secretary must be aware that London County Council could straight away take the whole output of the training courses going on for the next three years.
I mention the question of child care as a useful barometer and a test which can be applied equally to one area or another, but it will be understood that the child care officers are only a fraction of the departments of the Welfare State which deal with children. That is perhaps a slight confusion of terms. The care committees of the education committees are also involved. This is the reason for my raising the matter on this occasion, because it is only on the Consolidated Fund that one can make a consolidated criticism and suggestions for a consolidated remedy. The care committees are under the Ministry of Education, but the voluntary members of the care committees in my area face the same frustrating situation in that they cannot work entirely on their own. They cannot work adequately through the Ministry of Education, for they need to co-operate with others.
Their work reveals another aspect of the breakdown of society in those areas. It reveals how the breakdown often arises from the fact that the families concerned are paying too much rent for furnished rooms. May I quote one or two examples to the Home Secretary which were brought to my notice last week by a member of a care committee? She told me of a £9-a-week lorry driver, with five children, occupying two rooms and a kitchen and paying a rent of £3 15s. a week. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."] I agree that it is a shame, but I do not wish at the moment to discuss the rents of furnished rooms. I wish to present the picture of an interlocking chain of influences and circumstances contributing to family breakdown.
Another example was that of a family with five children, occupying two rooms and paying a rent of £4 15s. a week. The family said, "We are lucky to be here, because no one will take a family with five children". The man was a building worker who had been suffering from seasonal unemployment. When the representative of the care committee went there she found that the only food which the mother had available for herself and the children under school age was potatoes. That was the only food being eaten by that family in Paddington within a few days of a speech made by the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount

Hinchingbrooke), on the subject of agricultural subsidies, in which he said:
… now we have a lavish and affluent society, many people could afford to pay higher prices for their food."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th March, 1960; Vol. 619, c. 944]
That these things can take place in the same country at the same time and without people knowing is justification of the noble Lord's action in seeking to call attention in this debate, by Amendment, to some of the weaknesses of the methods which we employ to examine Government administration and the spending of the taxpayers' money. I am grateful to him both for threatening to raise the subject of the examination of the Estimates and for giving me this example of how one part of the country does not know how the other part lives. The woman in these rooms said, "I am lucky to be here. Do not say anything about it, or we shall be thrown out; and we can get no other accommodation."
I have another case of a family with two children occupying two rooms and paying a rent of £4 5s. The family income is £9 a week. This is an example of a family being thrown out of its accommodation after the end of the security of tenure granted by the rent tribunal. It was thrown out because the wife is expecting her third child. One child, aged 13, was forced to share a room and to sleep with an 80-year-old grandmother who was suffering from cancer of the throat. How long will it be before that 13-year-old girl comes to the Home Secretary's attention as a decimal of a point in a percentage figure on some other return from some other Department of the Welfare State?
From education, I turn to what happens when the child leaves school to seek employment. I have tried to raise in the House, very much on the periphery of the rules of order, the need for an employment policy for London. We have the extraordinary anomaly in London that the Ministry of Education and, in particular, its instrument, the London County Council, has the most magnificent system in the world of technical training over a whole range of jobs and yet there is no employment policy to secure that jobs are available in London for trained youngsters.
The newest industries are not allowed to move to London. Ford's was the last big factory which will ever be allowed


to be built in the London area. Every time a new development, technique or industry arises, those concerned with it are talked into establishing it elsewhere. As a result, the London children who have had these opportunities of schooling and training seek in vain for apprenticeships. The Report of the Youth Employment Committees last year showed that it was ten times as difficult to get an apprenticeship in London as in the country as a whole.
It is difficult enough, with the alternative temptations in London, to convince young boys that it is worth while to take on apprenticeships, even if they can get them. The opinion gets around that only the "suckers" work for £3 or £4 a week when, by "spivving", a boy can get £10 or £15 a week. About three weeks ago one of my constituents appeared in the magistrates' court, having been pulled in for hanging around a car park, loitering with intent, at 1 a.m. The magistrate talked to him kindly about his possibilities of getting steady employment and suggested that the probation officer could help him get an apprenticeship. The lad replied, "Why should I rough it?"
These are the facts of life in London. These are the problems of the 'sixties. We must face them. If the Home Secretary makes a move to co-ordinate a drive first to analyse and then to tackle the problems of these special areas, as I hope he will, the Minister of Labour will have the job of dealing with apprenticeships, but only with the assistance of planning authorities will he be able to stop the constant build-up of small, unskilled industries in London.
That is one of the problems. Instead of skilled industries coming to London, we have seeping in, here and there, small industries which will employ perhaps only one skilled worker. For the rest, they employ married women who have to do part-time work to try to find part of the large rent which they have to pay for their rooms.
A new menace is creeping into London—I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro).

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: I did not say a word.

Mr. Parkin: This is a menace which we thought we had dealt with many years ago—the menace of lowly paid out-work. West Indian women, unable to place their children in nurseries— because in some parts of London, such as Paddington, there has been a drive to reduce the number of nurseries for children—take work into their homes.
One example was an operation on a handbag for which they were paid 1s. a dozen. If a woman worked hard from morning to night she could do a gross in a day. Such work emanates, perhaps, from a warehouse or a back-street so-called factory which is occupying space in London which ought to be used for something else. The Minister of Labour will also have the problem of dealing with seasonal workers, because it is a much more serious matter to be seasonably unemployed in London than it is in an area where rents are not so high.
There are many other matters which the Home Secretary would find worth studying. I wonder, for instance, which Ministry is making a serious study of the impact of family allowances. Are family allowances something which were introduced and are then to be forgotten? Are they to depend upon the mood of a Chancellor of the Exchequer? Are they to be raised at some time when the country feels affluent and the lower income groups are to have a little rise? Or is someone trying to find out whether they are most helpful in their present form?
There is a good case to be made out for an allowance for the first child, even if the total allowances are reduced, because in some parts of the country the greatest difficulties which have to be faced are at the time when a couple are first married, when the wife has had to give up work and when the first child comes without their having had an opportunity to save to acquire a house or household equipment.
I want to read a letter which came to me last week which, I think, sums up the way in which the social services in some parts of London have been grinding to a halt and failing to meet the needs of the people for whom they were devised. It says:
I wish to beg of you to help my family and myself to get rehoused as in the above


address life is getting unbearable. My wife and our four children and myself live in one room, with the use of a kitchen that is shared with three other families; also the use of w.c., which is used by at least seven families, and which my wife has to clean daily; also a large passageway. My family also share a bath, with seven families which is overrun with heat beetles.
When I received that letter, a gas fitter and his apprentice were working in my kitchen, and we had been talking about politics and the housing problem. I read out that bit of the letter and asked, "Who do you think is the landlord?" The apprentice answered straight away, "I know, a black". Let me read on:
 I work for the London Transport Executive as a charge hand, maintaining the electrified track. My work is all night and, as you may know, it is very hard for me to sleep during the day, especially when it is cold or wet and we have to keep the children indoors. The rent I pay here for the room is £2 4s. and 7s. 6d. a week for heating, which consists of one radiator which is heated by steam. My children suffer with coughs all the winter.
The doctor told him to turn off the radiator, but he still has to pay for the heating.
This building is a London County Council halfway house, and now I have been here for over three years. Before that my wife and my children were in Newington Lodge for two years, but I could not be with them as it was not allowed for husbands to be there. Before that I lived in a very nice, sunny basement flat owned by a doctor, but the Paddington Borough Council condemned it as the doctor could not see his way financially to do the work required by the council. As we had nowhere else to go, my wife and children were put into the L.C.C. rest home and I had to find lodgings elsewhere. I have also been on category A, urgent, since 1955 with the L.C.C. But on New Year's Day I had a white letter to say that I will not be housed by them for at least three years.
There are several points arising from that letter which are worthy of the attention of the House. I will deal with one straight away. I went to find out what had happened to the basement from which he was thrown out six years ago. Nothing has happened to the basement. It is still there—not repaired, not reconditioned. I will come to that again in a moment.
The "white" letter referred to means that the London County Council cannot even discuss the matter. As the Director of Housing, who has sent a very helpful letter to some of us in London constituencies, says:

The Housing Committee have made it clear that I cannot deal with inquiries from Members about such applicants.
He has very kindly sent duplicates of the sort of letter which it is useful to send to people who write to him on that. There is no appeal. I fully appreciate the difficulties. When the London County Council strikes 120,000 people off its waiting list it can expect 120,000 letters which cost a lot of money to deal with. One can appreciate the despair which arises from knowing that most of them cannot be dealt with.
I can appreciate what has led to this situation, but I do not think that there is any other function of any other Department of State where there is not some appeal. Traditionally, there is an appeal through a Member of Parliament now before Supply is granted to Her Majesty. That is why I am raising this matter here, because I see no other way in which I can raise it.
I went to see the dwelling. At the entrance there was a very nice notice which stated, "London County Council. Short stay accommodation." At the main gate the foundation stone is still there. It was laid by the Rev. Francis Cameron, in 1870, and the text still reads, "The poor are always with us". I think that it was a delicate touch of the architect to leave that undisturbed.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The rules of debate no doubt are very wide in this context, but I am not sure that I follow how the hon. Member can relate matters for which the London County Council is clearly responsible to the Supply granted by this Bill. He must do that.

Mr. Parkin: I am aware of that, Mr. Speaker, but there is a housing subsidy granted to the London County Council and other grants given to it. There are also various clerks employed by the Home Office and other Ministers of the Crown who ring up the London County Council. Of course, it is true that every Ministry must be in some way or other in communication with the London County Council, but, even if Chat were not so, I respectfully submit that the structure of local government was created by Parliament and it can be modified by Parliament.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is in two difficulties. One is the fact that a subsidy paid to a body would


not bring what is the responsibility of that body within order on the Second Reading of this Bill. Further, the fact that this House, by other legislation, could alter some structure, for instance of local government or local government housing, would not bring the matter in order on Second Reading.

Mr. Parkin: I am basing my reliance on your tolerance, Mr. Speaker, towards me in relation to this, on the ground that if my constituents have a grievance against Her Majesty's Government it is a tradition of this House that grievances should be discussed before Supply.
Each time I take a party of children around the House of Commons I try to explain that to them, and it seems that I have sometimes been wrong. I think it right today to try to assert that right, not against any opposition, but to assert it on their behalf to show that there is one time and place at which one can raise the grievances of the citizens as they have been raised for centuries, always to be met by the kindly suggestion that Supply should be taken formally and grievances discussed afterwards. How many monarchs have said something like this to Parliament, "My heart bleeds for you. I am sorry that I am so busy getting ready to go to the Crusades. Just vote the money now. Actually, I was going to appoint an interdepartmental committee to look into this very matter".
Men have gone in jeopardy of their lives for the principle that that attitude of the Government must be resisted and grievances discussed first. But I do not want to elaborate too greatly. You, Mr. Speaker, have kindly allowed me to make my point that there is no right of appeal on this issue and that there should be. I hope that it will be put right.
There was a Question on the Order Paper today concerning World Refugee Year. We think with great sympathy about camps of refugees. The family whose circumstances I have so inadequately detailed is not a problem family. The man earns £13 or £14 a week as a skilled worker on the electrified track. He has done nothing wrong. It was the fact that the dwelling in which he lived was condemned and he was thrown out. He has gone into something worse. He

is not clever enough to write a book and say, "I am a refugee from the Welfare State".
We are horrified when we think about what happens in refugee camps. Let us be horrified at the thought that that man will have children who will have no recollection of living anywhere except in an institution up to the age of 10 years —two years in Newington Lodge, separated from the father; three years in a workhouse in one room, paying £2 4s. a week, plus 7s. 6d. for the radiator, and now to be told that there are another three years to come. How soon will it be before the Human Rights Commission looks at this, before foreign tourists visit the Plumstead Strip to find out how and why these people have to live in these conditions? Yet no one is to raise a voice on their behalf.
That is why I feel that, inconvenient as it may be to the arrangements for a debate in the House, this is the chance to draw attention to these shortcomings and that it is my duty to do so. How can I—how can any of us—do as was suggested so many years ago, when draft letters were sent saying, "I am guiltless of the death of this innocent man. See ye to it"? But I am not guiltless if I remain silent. If I remain silent, I cooperate in the destruction of this family. It is still going on. There is a great need for co-operation.
If one is taken round ancient temples, or the Pyramids, macabre guides tell one how many people died in the building. How many families were broken because of the Cromwell Road extension? There is no provision in the Estimates, or through the departments of this House, for making any other arrangements for housing these families, except that they have to be rehoused in priority to the people on the waiting list. They have to be rehoused from the general pool of housing available to the London County Council. Therefore, each time the Minister of Transport cuts a ribbon or celebrates a flyover he should reveal not only the millions of pounds it has cost, but its price in human family destruction.
If I did not raise this now, the whole traditions of the House would be ignored, not only the ancient history, but the modern history, also. I will not go back over the centuries, but we only


have to glance round the Chamber at the very Chair in which you, Mr. Speaker, sit and the inkstands in the Division Lobbies, with little labels on them saying that they have been given by a country in the Commonwealth, for that to be borne home with graphic force. They did not give them because they thought that we could not afford them. They gave them as their tribute to the building up of Parliamentary democracy. Parliamentary democracy is not expanding in the world, but shrinking. It is shrinking also in London.
Last weekend I was at a meeting in a part of London, outside my constituency, which was considerably interrupted. I am glad to say that neither the police nor the stewards got the bleached blonde girl in the middle, who was an attacking, screaming, virago. I am glad that they did not get her, because it was important that she should stay. I could have borne it better if she had used the conventional obscenities and blasphemies of abuse, but she employed the sophisticated obscenity of racial doctrines and the calculated blasphemy of the denial of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man which had been taught to her by a few evil men exploiting shocking social conditions.
When she and her husband came to see me after the meeting, when they had simmered down, he said, "I have never spoken to a Member of Parliament before". They are as good as gold at heart. Their only trouble is that they have to live in one room and they want to fight for their child. I do not know what advice to give them.
I had a similar case where the basement was insanitary and should be put right. This is the sort of confusion we are in. This is where we need the help of the Home Secretary in co-ordinating these matters. The sanitary inspector says that he will put a closure order on it. The tenant says, "Let him put a closure order on it. I will go to an L.C.C. home." Does he know what awaits him if he goes there? Should I have advised him to go there knowing what I do of the time that he will be there and what hope he has?
The landlord says, "Let the sanitary inspector put a closure order on it. That is just what I should like. Then I can sell the lease to a nice little nigger".

It would be a nice little nigger, who would pool his savings and write home to "mum" saying that he had bought a lovely house in London when, in fact, he had been swindled into buying a filthy slum with only a five-year lease to run.

Mr. Speaker: I am breast high with the hon. Member in asserting his right to ventilate grievances before Supply is granted. I should not be faithful to my predecessors were that not my view. However, I must have the interests of other hon. Members in mind. For that reason, I have to require the hon. Member to keep within order in relation to this debate on the Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time". I have explained to him those matters which are the responsibility of the local authority. I do not at present understand how the hon. Gentleman gets within the rules of order.

Mr. Parkin: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for that Ruling and for your tolerance.
At this point, I was going to move to my suggestions as to what the Home Secretary might usefully do. I am sure that he will recollect this little piece of advice to him from the book of Genesis, where the chief butler went to Pharoah and said, "I do remember my faults this day". There is also a precedent for sending for other junior members of the Government, because he sent for Joseph.
What I hope the Home Secretary will do is, first, to agree to a scientific investigation. By "scientific" I mean as coldly factual as one can make it along the lines of the statistics I asked for to establish in which areas the Welfare State as we know it today has broken down and is a delusion, a sham and a whited sepulchre. If he can establish that, I hope that, next, he will lend his great influence to drawing the country's attention to the need for a very great deal more dedication to public service of all kinds than the country is getting at present.
These problems cannot be solved by legislation, or by force. They want a great deal of patient attention and understanding. The problem of my constituent who works on the railways and who came from the basement could no doubt be solved eventually if someone were able to give him advice, but it must


be someone who is a co-ordinating welfare officer and who knows all the opportunities available.
Secondly, I hope that the Home Secretary will feel that the time has come now, in the 1960s, when he should designate certain areas which are socially distressed and in danger of breakdown, just as, in the 1930s, we designated certain economically distressed areas for special attention. Within those areas, much more flexibility should be shown in the co-operation among Departments. There should be some way of shortening the process by which it is decided not only how much can be spent but how much can be saved. I regret the stupidity of allowing a family to break down when that breakdown can be prevented by spending £2,000 or £3,000 on a building and when, as a result of the breakdown, the family may cost £50 or £60 a week over a period—a lengthening period—in which families sink into that substratum of society.
I appreciate that I have kept the House long enough. I make that positive suggestion to the Home Secretary, that he should seriously study the suggestion of designated areas of social breakdown and distress so that all the co-ordinated efforts can be brought against the mounting evils. I do not object to Votes on Account. There was a very famous occasion of a Vote on Account when the Samaritan took two pence and gave them to the host and said:
Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
The Samaritan had the immense advantage over the rest of us that he knew the answer to the question, "Who is my neighbour?" I am very much afraid that in these days, in some sections of the community, we do not see our neighbour, we do not know who our neighbour is, nor what his difficulties are.

4.12 p.m.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and and to add instead thereof:
this House, before consenting to the Second Reading of this Bill, desires to be satisfied that no improvement can be made in the machinery for the control and limitation of expenditure, as well by the supervision of the Treasury as by the informed and effective exercise of the authority of this House.

The hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) has used an individual key to open the door of historical access to these debates, and in so doing has put to shame the desire of the leaders of his party to suppress our ancient constitutional usages and to overformalise our proceedings.
The hon. Member's speech, and the way that the House has received it, are part of our message to the world. There must be very few Parliaments where it is possible for a speech like that to be made without strong expressions of ill-favour by organised political parties, by the Executive, and by the authorities of the House. The hon. Member is to be congratulated on having restored some of our ancient practices.
Forty years ago, almost to this day, an Amendment was moved in exactly these terms. The debate began at 6 o'clock and ended at 10 o'clock, the Amendment being negatived. That was a four-hour discussion. I know that there axe other proceedings to which hon. Members wish to address themselves, and with which they want to proceed, and I only hope that this debate will not run as long as on that occasion.
I will deliberately discard a passage of my speech to enable the debate to be shortened. I had hoped to make quotations and rebuttals. I had hoped to deal with the reply given by the Leader of the House to the Leader of the Opposition at Question Time the other day, and to submit some considerations from the last twenty years or so in rebuttal of what was said by the two right hon. Gentlemen. I will desist from that and merely say that while the Opposition may very well have the right to choose subjects for debate on the Consolidated Fund and in Committee of Supply, in other words, to choose the business of the House on those days, what they have no right to do is to choose to do no business on the Consolidated Fund and in Committee of Supply. That is what is, in fact, the case when these debates are completely formalised and money is voted on the nod and the Opposition use the hours of their day to debate passing political topics of their choice.

Mr. Alfred Robens: The hon. Gentleman is as guilty as everybody else.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: The right horn. Gentleman is factually and technically correct. It was in 1947, when my right hon. and hon. Friends were in opposition, that the formal procedure began, the formal procedure of taking a Vote on the nod and proceeding to another debate. I regret to recall that it is the Conservative Party which started this practice and I hope that when my right hon. and hon. Friends reflect upon that they will be more zealous than ever to get away from it.
It is said by many people that we should not tamper with the procedure as it is today, because it suits the Opposition and might suit us when we are in opposition in the future. I point out with some passion that there is a constitutional, historical and philosophical difference between the political parties. We are not playing Box and Cox in debate and automatically, in opposition, formalising debates and in Government agreeing to that formalisation, because if we are in that Box and Cox position remorseless collectivism is inevitable, because the Opposition will always be voted down by the Government of the day and no persuasive arguments will be accepted by the Government of the day to reduce their impact on society.
Unless the party in power urges the difference which lies between the parties, the philosophical difference in our outlook on political events, we ourselves will be lost when we get into opposition, because we shall be unable to use these arguments at that time.
In the Second Reading debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill on 24th March, 1920, an Amendment in exactly the same terms was put forward. The Civil Estimates then stood at £500 million per annum. Today, they stand at six times that figure and, if what I understand to be the increase which the Government have politically accepted in anticipation comes into effect, next year's figure will be seven times what it was when this debate was last initiated.
May I briefly look at some of the aspects of the Government and the House at that lime? The Secretary of State for War in those days was the father-in-law of the present Secretary of State for War. The Secretary of State for Air in those days—incidentally, the same man—was, father-in-law of the present Minister of

Aviation—[HON. MEMBERS: "Was?"]— is the father-in-law. The Under-Secretary for the Colonies was father of the present Under-Secretary for the Colonies. Last, but not least, the most junior of the Assistant Clerks, whose name hardly appeared but did just appear on the list of Officers of the House, was none other than E. A. Fellowes, Esq., our most distinguished Clerk now. So quite a cosy atmosphere, reaching back over forty years, now envelops us.

Mr. Marcus Lipton: Who was then the Member for Dorset, South?

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: My Amendment is in identical terms to that moved by Mr. E. Wood, later Lord Halifax, father of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power, perhaps the greatest of all spenders in the Government.
There are two branches of this subject to which I should like to draw the attention of the House: Treasury control and policy control—taking care of the pence and taking care of the pounds. I have extracted from the debate of that time just two speeches, of the mover of the Amendment to illustrate what I want to say about Treasury control, and of the seconder to illustrate what I want to say about policy control.
At c. 511 of Vol. 127 appear these words by Mr. E. Wood:
I am quite definitely of the opinion that the House of Commons is useless at detail in finance. When they attempt to raise it they can be beaten every time by the Minister, and the only thing they achieve by raising detail is not to save that year, but to have such an intimidating effect, perhaps, upon some officials in some Departments that they are very careful what they put into the Estimates another time. I do not put it higher than that."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th March, 1920; Vol. 127, c. 511–2.]
I respectfully agree with the father of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power that we in this House cannot control the amount that flows into the great spending Departments. We can only invent or perfect the machinery of control. I have one or two suggestions to make on this and questions to ask which I should now like to put on the aspect of financial control inside the Government.
There is need for an up-to-date statement on financial control within the spending Departments. I understand that there is a Committee at work upon this— the Plowden Committee. I hope that


when it reports, its report will not be a report only to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but that it will be a report that is made public and made available to this House. We have already available the Report of the Public Accounts Committee on Treasury control, to which, I understand, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden) will be referring.
Secondly, I ask the question whether the spending agencies of the Treasury should not now be hived off. It seems to me to be very bad doctrine for the left hand to know what the right hand doeth. In other words, if we have, inside the Treasury, agencies and civil servants concerned with spending on a lavish scale, through the University Grants Committee, the Arts Council, or whatever agencies it has under its hat, they are all the less inclined to take a severe, practical and austere view about the expenditure of money. Every effort should be made by the Government to divest the Treasury of these spending agencies and attach them to the other Departments concerned.
My third point arises from what was said by another father of a prominent Parliamentarian, Sir Arthur Michael Samuel, in that distant debate. He suggested that there should be a "pound per man" statistic so that the sheer administrative cost for each £ of expenditure voted to a spending Department could be compared with previous years. That is an aspect of affairs which should be looked into. Parkinson's law is at work—there is no doubt whatever about it—inside the Civil Service. Quite apart from policy decisions which generate a great deal of money, and make the spending of that possible inside the Departments, there must be a disposition to increase the size of the staff and the amount of money which it absorbs. What can we do to find out whether the throughput of this money under policy decisions is properly controlled by a limited number of people?
In the Army, Navy and Air Force Votes, we vote the effectives before we vote the money. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) asked the pertinent question as to how many land-based admirals there were. Why cannot we ask, as regards the Civil

Estimates, how many airborne executives there are in aviation, or how many floating inspectors there are in transport, and questions of that kind? In other words, what prevents Parliament devising a machine which requires the voting of effectives in the civil agencies of the Government as in the military agencies of the Government?
I would like to know whether there is in being an economy committee of the Cabinet. I very much hope that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will devote part of his financial statement on Budget day to an explanation to the House and to the public of what general apparatus of control of public expenditure is now available to him.
I do not feel very warmly about the Report of the recent Select Committee of this House. It dealt with a vast number of small topics. It took only a year or a year and a half to do its work. It threw aside a lot of material which was readily made available to it from outside. It concerned itself entirely with inner matters. It issued a jejune Report. It was inadequate to the circumstances in which we now find ourselves. I only hope that as a result of this debate and other attempts something will be done to enlarge these themes and get proper reforms made.
Unfortunately, the Government did not do with the recent Select Committee what the Socialist Government did with their Select Committee—that was, to send it a "hot" memorandum of what it wanted it to do. I remember very well, because I was a member of that Select Committee in 1945–46. We received a "hot" memorandum from Lord Morrison of Lambeth. He knew what he wanted to do. He knew what the Socialist majority in the House required the House to do. That Committee, although we gave his memorandum detailed consideration over a year or more—the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) must remember it all very clearly—accepted the general desire to transform the business of Parliament. And so it turned out that great reforms were made. Last year's Select Committee was left leaderless because it had nobody, either inside or outside it, who had the sufficient power to compel it to make cogent decisions on public business.
I should now like to refer, in humble but devoted acknowledgment, to three great authorities on the subject of Parliamentary reform. The first is Dr. Paul Einzig, whose book many hon. Members may have read. I think that he has made an effective addition to a store of authoritative and erudite works on economics and constitutional questions. I am sure that hon. Members would derive great pleasure from reading this most interesting book. It is a mine of information on the subject.
Secondly, I want to refer to a very great constitutional reformer whose work has not been sufficiently recognised. I refer to Sir Gilbert Campion, later Lord Campion, a previous Clerk of this House. One of his proposals of many which I wish to bring before the House comes out best if I read very short extracts from the Third Report of the Select Committee on Procedure, 1946. In paragraph 36 the Report says:
The passing of Estimates in the Committee of Supply is the formal procedure by which the expenditure of Departments is authorised, but, as is well known, this procedure has almost ceased to serve the purpose of financial scrutiny, and is used almost exclusively for the criticism of policy and administration.
Paragraph 37 reads:
As a consequence of this change in the predominant functions of the Committee of Supply, the House of Commons has perforce devised other means outside the House itself for the detailed examination of expenditure.
Paragraph 42 states:
The foregoing account of the different origins of the Public Accounts Committee and the Estimates Committee indicates the difference in their functions. The Public Accounts Committee is primarily an instrument to ensure financial regularity in the Accounts, the function of the Estimates Committee is to criticise expenditure on the basis not of regularity but of economy and sound business principle.
Sir Gilbert Campion suggests that these two functions could, with advantage, be combined in the work of a single committee to be called the Public Expenditure Committee.
The Select Committee seized upon the idea of Sir Gilbert Campion and confirmed it in its Report. In paragraph 43, these words appear:
… Your Committee consider that the functions of the Committee of the Public Accounts and the Estimates Committee would be better performed by a single Committee. Such a Committee would have no powers beyond those possessed by the separate com-

mittees now, and there would be no change in the position or duties of the Comptroller and Auditor General either in relation to the Departments or the Committee. The advantage of combining both functions in a single Committee working through sub-committees is twofold.
There is a further quotation, and then paragraph 44 states:
Your Committee approve Sir Gilbert Campion's suggestion that provision should be made for securing discussion in the House of the Reports of the proposed Public Expenditure Committee by giving them precedence on not more than two of the days allotted to Supply.
Two points arise there. The first is the acceptance, fifteen years ago, by a Committee of this House of the major suggestion of a great constitutional reformer and a former Clerk of this House for the appointment of a Public Expenditure Committee and, secondly, a strong recommendation by that Select Committee that the Reports of this Committee should be automatically debated on two of the Supply days.
I am going as fast as I possibly can, so as not to take unduly the time of the House. If some of my points are not sufficiently cogently argued, perhaps the House will forgive me.
I should now like to refer to our present most distinguished Clerk and to the suggestions that he made in a memorandum to the Select Committee which sat last year on which the Committee questioned him but never saw fit to reproduce them in its Report. The more is the pity. I regard it as a great honour to be able to refer to them now. Our present Clerk took up Lord Campion's statement from paragraph 12 of his memorandum, the document to which I have just referred. These are Lord Campion's words:
There is no form of proceeding in the House itself for the examination of expenditure with a view to securing economy, i.e. value for money spent".
That is one of the most tremendous Parliamentary statements that has ever been made. There has never been an occasion in this House on which we could debate expenditure within its financial and tax-raising context. There is a strong recommendation by our present distinguished Clerk, derived from Lord Campion, that effect should be given to this.
I want to read the present Clerk's answer to a question which was put to


him by the Select Committee. Part of his answer to Qn. 169 was:
Supply tends to be neglected
in May and June
and even more so does it tend to be neglected after July, when it practically disappears until the following February. Occasionally, the House has a financial debate, but there is no routine process by which the House considers any financial business between the end of July and the following February. One of my suggestions is that there should be opportunities provided in the autumn for a routine examination of the half-way stage in the course of the year, and one of my suggestions is that the only way I can see of absolutely ensuring that is not to grant all the money at the end of July, but to make that also a Vote on Account to carry up to the end of December, so that before the end of December the Government have got to come to the House to get more Supply. I suspect there will be many objections raised to that suggestion from the Treasury point of view, but it is put forward as a procedural suggestion for getting the financial state of the country debated for certain in the autumn.
That Vote on Account in the autumn, recommended by our distinguished Clerk, would provide scope for what Lord Campion suggested about debating expenditure within its financial context. I firmly believe, and I hope that the House agrees with me, that we are morally obliged to take these weighty matters into consideration and that effect should be given to the considered view of two of our most eminent public servants in recent years.
Very humbly and quickly, I would venture to give what I was prevented from giving the other day for procedural reasons, namely, my own suggestion about the Estimates. I hoped that the House would bring itself to agree that 10 days out of the 26 should be devoted to an examination of the Estimates. That would not be a surrender of the Opposition rights. It seems to me that it would be a recognition of the Opposition's duties. In those 10 days, one whole day, or, maybe, a half day, could be devoted to each of the 17 great spending Departments. The time of allotting that half day could be easily arranged, as we arranged the times yesterday and the day before, by the usual equilateral triangle of power in this House, namely the Chair and the usual channels. That is a quite easy matter.
We could not do this until quite recently, because Supply Days were not

strung out, as they are now, throughout the year. Until quite recently they were concentrated in the summer months and Parliament would have found it intolerable to go on discussing Estimates and public finance in the compressed period of June and July; but I suggest that now that these Supply days have been strung out, as it were, throughout the whole year, consideration of the Estimates will prove more agreeable to hon. Members.
The second main thing I want to refer to is policy control—taking care of the pounds. I give this quotation from a speech in that debate of forty years ago by the seconder of the Amendment, Sir P. Pilditch. He said:
I refer to the questions of Government or Cabinet responsibility for economy. I cannot help thinking that we shall get economy when and only when we have a Government and a Cabinet into whose very bones the need for retrenchment has entered, which feels that it is carrying out a national mandate, and to that end overriding all sectional demands to spend money on this or that excellent thing. We shall only get economy when we have a vigorously economical Chancellor of the Exchequer—which I am certain we have at this moment"—
Have we?
backed by an economical Prime Minister— which I hope and believe we have got"—

Hon. Members: Have we?

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I am not sure—
and a Cabinet thoroughly seized of the fact that every member of it is expected by the nation to assist the Chancellor of the Exchequer in keeping every Department within proper financial bounds, and not working on the theory that if you will scratch my financial back I will scratch yours."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th March, 1920; Vol. 127, c. 516.]
I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has left the House. I hope that he is to take charge of the debate and respond to it at the end.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle): My hon. Friend the Leader of the House has told me that he will only be away for twenty minutes and that he is sorry that his time-table has made it necessary for him to miss part of my noble Friend's speech.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I am not thinking of my own speech, but of the debate to come.
Last year the Civil Estimates were £2,988 million. We are told that the Supplementary Estimates this year will amount to an extra £340 million. We understand that the question of paying the doctors an increase in their salaries is now before the Cabinet, and that if the salaries are raised it will cost £50 million. We understand that the total amount of aid now given to private industry and in prospect is another £150 million, making a total in the Civil Estimates of £3,528 million. This figure is 17·6 per cent. of the gross national product. I have omitted from it the budgetary consequences of the railway settlement. When the Conservative Government came into office in 1951, that percentage was 16·4 in relation to the gross national product.
I find this very disturbing indeed. I made a speech to my electorate in South Dorset, only six months ago, in which I said I would do my utmost to ensure that the Conservative Government realised their ambitions of lowering the cost of living I was fortified in that statement at that election by the speeches made during the autumn and winter months by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which seemed to show that a slight reduction in prices in the shops would be taking place shortly, consequent upon the high productivity of industry today.
We had some very serious events in 1955 and 1956. The Government injected a tremendous amount of money into the public economy. The Leader of the House, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, by his autumn Budget of 1955, helped to increase the cost of living, and a raging inflation was being experienced by this country nine months later. A large number of Conservative supporters in the country defected and joined the Liberal Party. Fortunately, owing to a very rapid change of events and the courageous actions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft), the Conservative Party entered the General Election with its full contingent of troops and supporters intact, and those defections to the Liberals returned to us.
There is, however, a fundamental difference between the present situation and the situation at that time. We could say and did say, in 1957, that we were

stopping an inflation caused by the war and the irresponsible policies of members opposite. But if there is to be generated now, as a consequence of actions taken in the last year—we cannot go too deeply into the causes of them now—a very serious inflation in the next nine or twelve months, with the cost of living going up, and a great deal of pressure resulting from the aggregate of public and private spending, then the voters from the Conservative Party will not go to the Liberal Party, but to Labour, because, for the first time since the war, an inflation will have been deliberately brought about by the actions of Conservative statesmen.

4.48 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: I do not want to enter into controversy with the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinching-brooke) about political statistics. If we lost all the Conservatives who came to us at one time, we got back far more votes from somewhere else and still have them.
I do not want to delay the following debate on pensions. It is proper to raise the question of pensions today, because the state of pensions is a matter of grievance to many people who might well claim to have that attended to before Supply is granted. The noble Lord has raised, however, a very important matter—indeed, a variety of matters. He said that he was critical of the last Report of the Select Committee on Procedure because it did not go far enough. I agree with him, and I said so in the debate on that Report; but I doubt if he goes far enough, either.
What we have to face at some time— though this is not the time today—is that the fault is not the Government's in this matter of lack of financial control, but Parliament's. The noble Lord can pray for an economical Prime Minister, he can ask the gods for a mean-fisted Chancellor of the Exchequer, and look with misgivings on members of the Front Bench —such as the present one—who look well fed and are unlikely to be stingy, but it is hon. Members, under pressure from their constituents, who demand large expenditure.
During the next few weeks, in the Budget and Finance Bill debates, the pressure on the Government to spend


money will come from Members of Parliament. The Treasury is in the position, not of trying to dish out more money, but to curb demands on it. This is a situation Parliament has not faced. It is something needing far more drastic attention than at present. The time will come and must come when Members, apart from being able to suggest new expenditure, will also be bound to give an indication as to how the money is to be raised. I dare say we might have to hypothecate some taxes to some purposes. I know that would be of no real economical significance, but it might have a psychological effect when people bought something which was taxed. They would be made aware of the fact that some part of the cost of what they were buying would be due to some subsidy or other expenditure. That might be a slight incentive to economy. We want, too, to relate the taxation to the Estimates. To do that, we should have to alter the whole Parliamentary year. The noble Lord spoke of taking a vote on account in the autumn. That certainly might go some way towards it, and I too support that suggestion of the learned Clerk; but I think it would have to go a great deal farther than that if we really want to examine current Estimates before the expenditure is decided. Too much of the examination is at present too late and unrelated to the Budget.
One other point, and that is that a great deal of spending today arises from the reports of committees, the Guillebaud Committee being the latest and the one freshest in the public memory. It may be that these committees are essential, but I do not believe that Mr. Gladstone himself in the height of his economy campaign could have arrested Government expenditure if he had continually faced public announcements of recommendations from committees advocating further expenditure. I think it might well be considered that in the first place the reports of these committees should be made privately to the Government for their consideration in relation to all other relevant matters.
If we are seriously to tackle major matters of control over Government expenditure, I do not myself want to see the time which the Opposition has to raise policy matters much curtailed. I

think it is an important part of Parliamentary work. If we are going to curtail anything, I think it should be the detailed consideration of legislation by the House as a whole sitting in Committee. I share the views of both Lord Campion and our present learned Clerk that the time has probably been reached when the House of Commons can consider legislation in its wider aspects only and must delegate detailed consideration of it to specialised committees.

Mr. Nabarro: On a previous occasion the point was very powerfully made from this side of the House that the initiative to challenge these matters should not repose in the hands of the official Opposition. Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that my hon. Friends and I on this side of the House should also have appropriate initiative to challenge the voting of these huge sums of money, and that it should not be entirely in the hands of hon. Gentleman opposite?

Mr. Robens: But would hon. Gentlemen opposite vote against the Government?

Mr. Grimond: If I may get a word in edgeways, I would remark that I have always observed that the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) is so keen to hear what I have to say that he often cannot contain himself. I did mean to touch on that point later in my speech, which I hope will not be long any way.
I believe it is impossible for this House as a whole to conduct a sort of annual ramble through the Estimates, picking out oddments here and there without any guidance. I think the noble Lord would agree with that. I agree with him that the way to a more detailed examination has been pointed for us by Mr. Einzig and the two learned Clerks to whom the noble Lord referred.
It may be argued that, if these proposals were accepted, we should examine only a few items which might not be the most important, but I think there is something in the view that if the officials concerned knew that these studies were being made and these details were being given a great deal more attention, it would make them keep a close eye on their administration. There


is a passage in Mr. Einzig's book describing trembling senior civil servants sitting outside Committee Rooms upstairs. I think he may possibly have mistaken English Members waiting to attend the Scottish Grand Committee, but assuming that he is right, I feel there is something in the view that a little more detailed examination will enforce considerable attention to the amounts of the Estimates.
If this is to be done, certainly I think there is something to be said for combining the Select Committee of Public Accounts and the Select Committee on Estimates, but even more necessary, surely, is that the Estimates Committee or any new Committee should have skilled assistance in the way that the Public Accounts Committee now has, and that it should draw more matters to the attention of the House earlier than it is now in a position to do. It is difficult to do this, but it is very essential that it should be set up early in each Session and should make more interim reports to the House drawing attention to matters which the House would want to consider. I agree with the noble Lord that a certain amount of the time of the House should be reserved for the consideration of matters to which our attention may be drawn by the Estimates Committee—or by the Public Expenditure Committee, if that is set up.
If this is to be done, it means finding more time for those matters with which both Select Committees are concerned. There is a certain schizophrenia among Members of Parliament nowadays, in that they want to get away from this place more and, on the other hand, want to do more work in it. It is difficult to reconcile the two. My own view is that we have to go in for more specialised Standing Committees. I think we could experiment, for instance, with the Standing Committee on the Colonies; but I will not go into that now. More work might be done by groups of Parliamentarians who really know about and are really interested in subjects under review. I do no: believe that we shall get proper attention given to these subjects till we focus the attention on them of the people who know about and are interested in them and who keep them continually under review.
One of the things it is most necessary to keep under review is the provision of capital for the nationalised industries, but here again we are lacking in machinery. I myself believe that we ought now to have an investment board to consider not only the provisions of capital for the public industry, but the provision of public capital for private industry. If we cannot have an expert board, let us at least have a Select Committee.
Again, there is one related matter which I think it proper to mention, and that is, as I understand it, one thing which takes up a lot of time of Members of the House, the quite new development of all sorts of activities which go on in the Palace of Westminster which are not directly Parliamentary activities—party meetings, and related matters. There is an important party meeting going on now, I believe. [HON. MEMBERS: "It is over."] It is all over? Who won? [HON. MEMBERS: "Who won?"] Perhaps we shall be able to read about it in the "Stop Press". I believe that if we want Members of Parliament to attend Committees of the House and to have more time for all our business here, there is a saving to be made in the amount of their available energies which go to what I would call para-Parliamentary activities.
I do not believe we can go into all these matters in precise detail now. I believe that the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord for having raised this subject. I believe we have in this Report of the Select Committee some basis for immediate reform on matters of control and administration which could be brought in very easily now, but I believe that the wider issue of how in a democracy, in which the whole pressure is for more public expenditure, we are going to control the amount of national income which goes into that expenditure, is a very much greater matter with which it would not be appropriate to attempt at greater length to deal this afternoon.

4.58 p.m.

Mr. John Eden: I agree with the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) that the House certainly owes a debt of gratitude—not for the first time—to my noble Friend the Member for Dorset,


South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) for initiating the debate, and not only for initiating it but for the delightful and informative manner in which he has done so. I should also say that I fully understand what I should imagine are the feelings among the hon. Members who came here to speak in a debate upon pensions, but I should imagine also that they share that view of my noble Friend's speech. I would assure them that it has not been our purpose to try to push them out. It is unfortunate that that debate should come up at a somewhat later hour than we at first expected.
I would give expression to the view that we have not until comparatively recently taken quite so much interest in this subject of control of expenditure as we have in the subject of the Parliamentary control of taxation. Parliamentary control of taxation is, perhaps, generally more simple and less complex a subject. We have tended to be more concerned about the taxation levied in order to meet expenditure than with the way in which the money itself is to be spent, and I hope that the moving of this Amendment will at least reflect to some extent the growing uneasiness at the enormous national expenditure with which we are now confronted and the feeling that the House itself is not exercising that control which it is its duty to do.
Hon. Members will observe that the Amendment refers to the two springheads of control—the Treasury and this House—and I propose to say a few words about each. The most recent observations of the Treasury on this subject of the control of expenditure are contained, so far as I can tell, in the answer to the Sixth Report of the Select Committee on Estimates, 1957–58. This was printed in the Seventh Special Report from the Select Committee on Estimates on 17th June, 1959, and in it the Treasury shows quite clearly that it has been trying, as it were, to mend its ways over the past forty years and bringing its methods of the control of expenditure more into line with modern conditions.
A great deal of the expenditure of public money is now outside the control even of the Treasury itself. Already,

this system of Treasury control of public expenditure is, as my noble Friend has already informed the House, now the subject of a special inquiry under the chairmanship of Lord Plowden. I think the findings of that Committee will be of particular value if, as he says, they are made available to the House, and, secondly, if in its examination of this subject, the Committee includes a thorough examination of the financial control now exercised by the major spending Departments themselves. After all, it is the proper control of the spending Departments that we are after, and the Treasury in this respect must have a very close link with the spending Departments.
An interesting thing was apparent from the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates of 1958 and the Treasury's observations in 1959, in which both emphasised the vital rôle of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is he who, on behalf of Parliament—and I underline those words "on behalf of Parliament"—must exercise the major control within the Executive over the total of Government expenditure. The Treasury put this particularly strongly, first in paragraph 15 of its observations, in which it states, and I quote:
The second main factor—and it is of crucial importance—is the position of the Chancellor of the Exchequer among his colleagues, and the weight that they are content that his views should carry among them.
Again, in paragraph 16 of the Treasury's observations, it is stated:
A review of the scope of Treasury control involves, in effect, a review of the Chancellor's conception of his own responsibilities.
The Chancellor should not be alone in trying to control national expenditure.
The Chancellor and the Treasury are not the only essential features of the control on which we depend. There is also the Cabinet and such committees as it possesses, and I would add my support to the plea of my noble Friend that we should hear something of these activities of the economy committees, such as they are. In addition to the Cabinet, there is Parliament itself. Any review of financial control of public expenditure, to be worth while, must include some review of the system of Parliamentary control of finance. Here I would quote briefly from the speech, to which my noble Friend referred, made


by Mr. Edward Wood, as he then was, in the debate of 24th March, 1920, when he said:
If it be true that the Treasury is the keystone of this arch of financial control, it cannot be expected to do its work properly unless, in addition to being strong itself, it can count upon what I may call the twin supports on each side of it: on the one side the Cabinet and on the other side this House."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th March, 1920; Vol. 127, c. 511.]
It is upon the responsibilities of this House that I should like to turn my attention for a few minutes, and, in doing so, I want to ask the indulgence of the House itself, not only for taking up more time, but also because I am a comparatively new Member speaking on something which is really the prerogative of more senior Members than I am.
The House, in assisting it to exercise control of expenditure, has at its command two committees—the Committee of Public Accounts and the Select Committee on Estimates. It was in 1912, when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd George, moving that the Select Committee on Estimates should be set up, said that it was the aim that this Committee should be a Committee to assist the House of Commons to discharge its functions.
Too often, it seems to me, Reports of this Committee, set up to assist the House in the discharge of its functions, are ignored by the House itself, and the House tends too often to debate subjects of other kinds, instead of following up the Reports of the Select Committee itself. This is equally the case in the discussions which the House has been giving to the debates on the Estimates in Committee. We have gone a long way from what should have been the original course of action in examining these things critically. If we cannot do it to the extent which my hon. Friend suggested, at least we could have a short period of quick in-fighting, as it were, when these Estimates are before us, so that hon. Members can get in a few short, sharp question and points in examining these things.
But the House turns to debate subjects of a much more general nature, such as the one we are going to discuss today. This is the practice which has grown up over the past few years—for a much longer period than that which my hon. Friend mentioned—and which has reached its nadir in the hands of the

present Opposition. There must be something about the thrill of winding up a big debate on a big Parliamentary occasion, something which, maybe, I shall never experience, although I should much like to on one occasion.

Mr. Nabarro: Oh, my hon. Friend will.

Mr. Eden: There must be something about it, because hon. Members opposite are always most anxious to use their Supply Days for this particular purpose in order to stage a big Parliamentary occasion. It must be a very big temptation, but in not resisting this temptation they are, it seems to me, neglecting what, after all, is one of their very great responsibilities, namely, the careful scrutiny of the Estimates themselves and the exercising of ceaseless vigilance in regard to questions of economy and efficiency.
In fact, so far has the Opposition today departed from its proper rôle that, instead of pressing for economies, too many hon. and right hon. Gentlemen are constantly urging on the Administration schemes which would involve the expenditure of ever greater sums of money. If we have in the Chancellor a Minister who is trying to curb and control national expenditure, it is not very much help to him, in his capacity as guardian of the public purse, to have a House of Commons which, apparently, is not the slightest bit anxious to examine and scrutinise with care the Estimates which are placed before it.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: I hope the hon. Gentleman will not spoil what is a very good case in principle by misunderstanding it. When he says that the House of Commons ought to exercise the strictest control over expenditure, that does not only mean that we should do so in order to cut it down. Parliament may very frequently think that the Government are not spending enough money, and is entitled to say so, which is every bit as much and every bit as important a part of House of Commons control over expenditure as mere economy.

Mr. Eden: I agree with the hon. Gentleman in what he rightly referred to as our duty, but it is the tendency of the Opposition to give attention solely


to the need for the Government to spend more. It is a pity that when the national expenditure is rising to the extent that it is today, hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite do not exercise the duty, if not as an Opposition, at least as unofficial Members of the House, as individual Parliamentarians, to scrutinise the Estimates and examine whether or not the expenditure is absolutely essential. I would dearly love to hear echoed from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer or any of his hon. Friends who may be replying for him today the words spoken by a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Robert Home.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: He was a bad one.

Mr. Eden: He was already concerned in 1922 about the trend which is all too apparent today when he made this plea in a speech in a debate on 1st May, 1922:
… I ought to get the support of the House, first, in resisting new expenditure, however laudable, as well as in cutting off branches of services which, good and useful as they may be, are of such a character as at the present time we cannot afford to keep up."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st May, 1922; Vol. 153, c. 1029.]
That is what we ought to be doing today, and I emphasise "we". It is not for the Opposition alone but for the House, and I say to my hon. Friends, in particular, that it is the House that should be in close alliance with the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
If we are to be able to support the Chancellor in his efforts to control expenditure, he must see to it that we have all the necessary information at our disposal. There is no suggestion that we should return to what has been referred to as the theory of candle-ends economy, and it has often been said that the House is useless at the detail of finance.
We need a comprehensive grasp of the whole financial picture, and Ministers must help us to secure it by fully informing the House, not just about the cost of a particular project, but on how that cost relates to the whole of the Department's expenditure and how it departs, if it does, from what we have always considered to be the normal expenditure of that Department.
The Executive must bring the whole House into dose co-partnership with it

in this drive for economy. My noble Friend has made a number of suggestions, and I am very pleased that he has brought to the light of day Lord Campion's proposal for a Committee on Public Expenditure. We must bring the special Committees of the House into closer association with the House itself. Their reports should be more directly linked with our debates in the House. I would say to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that it is essential that, if the proposal he made to establish specialist committees is to gain acceptance, there must be some procedure whereby their reports are closely linked with debates in the House.
The main purpose of this debate is to invite a fuller expression of views on this subject than we have had in the recent past. We are not asking for the reincarnation of some ancient piece of machinery operated long ago at a time when it was probably easy to do that sort of thing and when Income Tax was only 1s. in the £. What we are asking for is that this problem should be looked at afresh in the light of modern conditions, of modern rates of expenditure and taxation, and that the procedure of the House should be adapted to suit modern needs.
As the Select Committee on Estimates said in 1958, at a time when
… Government expenditure comprises a higher proportion of the national income, and because of the fundamental part it plays in the economy, the interests of every citizen … are all the more involved …
it is essential that we should have some fresh inquiry into the whole of this problem.
My final observations are to endorse again what was said earlier—that whatever may be the technical devices we bring to the assistance of the House to help us in our task, the better control of national expenditure itself is well nigh impossible if, first of all, the official Opposition continues to neglect its responsibilities in this respect and, secondly, if Ministers of the Crown continue in the belief that we shall judge their performance the better the greater the sums they are able to secure from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
There is need for a policy change. It is quite clear that not only should the need for retrenchment enter the very bones of the Government themselves,


but that the House as a whole should be inspired by that same spirit if we are ever to be able to secure what is today so vitally necessary—a reduction in national expenditure.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: I hope that the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) will not mind if I say that he continually reminds me, charmingly though he does it, of the old story of the knight who dressed himself up in shining armour, mounted his horse and rode off in all directions. If he had confined himself to the point of principle of how the House of Commons is to conduct its affairs, I could have gone a long way with him. It is a pity that both he and the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden) should have complicated the matter by all sorts of party points, charges against the Opposition, and all that kind of thing.
I am in no doubt that the tendency of my hon. and right hon. Friends when we are dealing with social welfare is to press the Government to spend more. That has always been our function and I hope that it will always continue to be, and it is within our rights. I accept from the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West that it is the tendency of his party always to oppose any increase in expenditure on social welfare. But, in principle, there is no difference between us, because these tendencies are reversed if we are considering, for instance, instead of expenditure on social welfare, expenditure on defence. Then, our tendency on this side of the House is usually to call upon the Government to bring it down, and the tendency of hon. Members opposite is usually to try to induce the Government to spend more.

Mr. Nigel Birch: I do not think that the hon. Member has paid sufficient attention to the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) who constantly urges on the Government far greater expenditure on defence.

Mr. Silverman: I was talking of general tendencies rather than individual exceptions. I have even heard hon. Members opposite asking for more expenditure of a constructive kind, but it is the exception rather than the rule.

Mr. Robens: It is not the case that my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) has been asking for more money for defence. It is that he wants more value for the money that is being spent.

Mr. Silverman: I do not want to enter into a defence debate now, and I am sure, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you would not encourage me to do so.
I want to deal with one or two practical suggestions. I do not propose to follow the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South into an examination of the speeches made forty years ago. There is today a certain sensitivity about documents forty years old, and it is thought in some quarters that if one goes back longer than that one is really going back to the days before the Flood, into a primeval age. I cannot share that opinion. Perhaps I am a little too old to look at it in that way. But the problem which we are dealing with today has always been a problem of Parliament, as much forty years ago as it is today. I want to make a few practical suggestions before the Leader of the House replies, as I hope he will, to what has been a very interesting and I hope useful debate.
My first point is that whatever may be thought of the practice which the Conservative Party, then in opposition, started in 1947 and which my right hon. Friends are now following, it does not prevent any single hon. Member on either side of the House from raising any point which he thinks ought to be raised before Supply is granted.
I am very glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) coming back into the Chamber. He gave a classical illustration of the fact that that was still possible and that it still remains our duty. If I can do so without impertinence, I should like to congratulate him on what I thought was an outstanding Parliamentary performance for which all of us ought to be grateful to him.
Anybody can do that. The fact that the official channels have agreed to take the Measure formally is not binding on the House. It never has been binding on the House. We have now spent two hours deploring a situation which prevents hon. Members from raising questions, grievances and other things before


Supply is granted, when in fact they are not prevented at all. In my humble submission, the same two hours could have been much better occupied in dealing with their grievances, instead of crying out for other opportunities for dealing with them when the opportunities are here present under their noses.
The debates on the Consolidated Fund Bill—Second Reading, Committee stage, Report and Third Reading—have always been battles. They have been the occasion for private Members to raise a variety of points. It will be remembered that, but for the decision to take the Bill formally, it is exempted business. We can go on all night. We need not grant Supply until every Member of this House who has a grievance and wants to raise it, has raised it and has got a reply and is satisfied. That is still within our power.
That is the first practical point I want to make. Now I come to my second practical point. Though what I have said I believe to be true, it does not mean that we are not to some extent inhibited by this formalising of the procedure and taking the Parliamentary stage, as it were, on the nod. The noble Lord fairly said that this practice was started by the Conservative Party when in Opposition in 1947. I do not know whether the party regrets it. I know the noble Lord does, and some others; I hope they all do. I certainly do. Of course, they had an excuse. It is clear that they had much more confidence in the financial probity of the Labour Government of those days than they have in their own today—[Interruption.] Well, they must have had, otherwise why did they throw away voluntarily all these opportunities? They had nothing to complain about, no grievances, no charges of extravagance, no suggestions for further economy. That is what they are asking for now.
Whatever may have been their excuses, and however justifiable in the conditions of those days, I am prepared to go along with them. We should not continue that procedure now, and I will say why shortly. There is no need for it. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, West deplored the fact that these occasions were always taken by the Opposition as occasions for raising a major battle. That has always been so, and would still be so without this formal procedure of

taking the various stages immediately and passing them without further discussion and debate.
The difference was this: in the days when we did not do it in that way, under the misguided influence of the Tory Opposition of 1947, it was still true that the official Opposition chose the subject which would be debated first, and debated it as long as they wished it to be debated. There is nothing wrong in that. It becomes questionable only if it interferes with the rights of other people. In those days it did not interfere with those rights, because as soon as the major debate had been concluded, the rest of us could come in with any points or questions we wanted to raise, and we could go on all night if we wished.
That is the harm that is done by this procedure: not that we have the general debate, not that the official Opposition have the first choice of subject. Those are right and proper and there is no room for legitimate grievance about that. The grievance occurs because if we pass the Consolidated Fund Bill first and then raise the general question on a Motion, it means that the rights of everybody else are taken away. The suggestion I make is that, in any reconsideration of the matter, all that is necessary is to dispense with this procedure and restore the rights of back-benchers on what is essentially a back-benchers' occasion. That is my point and I hope it will be considered.
I agree with what the noble Lord said about the Select Committees of 1945 and 1946, of which we were both members. It is a pity that the House of Commons of that day, and subsequently, did not accept the recommendation of the Select Committee based on Lord Campion's Memorandum. I hope that, too, may be reconsidered some time.
Finally, may I make one trivial point for the consideration of hon. Members? I raise it with some diffidence and I do not do so by way of criticism of anybody. It is perhaps rather a pity that the Select Committee of last Session contained hardly anybody who had been in the House of Commons before 1945, and hardly anybody who had been on either of the Select Committees of 1945 and 1946. There is, or should be, a continuity of thought about these matters before we reach practical achievements.
I am sorry to have taken so long, but I hope the House will agree that I have tried to confine myself to practical points.

5.27 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Birch: I shall detain the House for only three minutes. Public expenditure is something in which I have always taken an interest, and at one period I took a rather intense interest in it.
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) spoke about the difficulty of the control of expenditure in a democracy. Here we have a situation where the Opposition is 100 per cent. in favour of more expenditure on everything—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Oh, yes, and a very large part of the Government supporters are also in favour of more expenditure on most things. I think it is remarkable in some ways that any control is observed at all. Things might be a great deal worse.
Is there any remedy? Here I disagree with many of my hon. Friends. I do not think it is much use having more Select Committees or rehashing the ones we have, for the simple reason that under our system Select Committees can deal only with administration and not with policy. When we are spending thousands of millions of pounds, while, of course, it is right to do all we can to get administrative economies, the total we can ever get is relatively so small as never to be decisive. It would be interesting to know how many admirals are not awash, and so on, but, having that information, we are not much further on than we were before.
It is policy that matters. Can Parliament exercise any influence on policy? There is only one way and that is the suggestion contained in the speech of my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinohingbrooke). I cannot remember whether it came from Lord Campion or his successor. It was the suggestion that we should split the Vote on Account and have debates in the autumn. A debate in October might be very valuable; a debate in November might have some value, but by the time that December is reached the battle is lost —the Estimates are through.
I would like to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer getting up and saying,

"All right, I have been pressed to spend all this money, but if my Estimates go up by a certain amount then the following effects will be seen in taxation in my next Budget." Of course, he could not say exactly what he would do about individual taxes, but he could give a pretty clear indication. Something which everyone knows but often tends to forget when asking for more expenditure is that if we spend more money we pay more taxes.
If we have a debate in October, at the moment of decision, then, I think, some effect might be produced. People have talked a great deal—

Mr. Grimond: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I am extremely interested in what he says. As I am sure he will agree, it is the pressure of the public which is behind many of the policy decisions for higher expenditure. I would like to hear from the right hon. Gentleman if he thinks there is any way by which we can relate the Estimates and the estimated expenditure to taxation. Even if we had the debate in the autumn of which he spoke, we should still have the position that although the Chancellor would talk about the taxation which he proposed to impose, the two would not be directly related and the public would not feel the effects of it for six months or a year afterwards.

Mr. Birch: I think the hon. Gentleman is under-estimating the intelligence of the voters. That is the mistake which the Labour Party made at the last election. It said that it would spend thousands of millions more but would not raise taxes. The voters knew that that was nonsense. It is necessary for hon. Members, particularly if they want to be honourable with their constituents, to realise the position.
As regards the Cabinet, the point is, of course, that the great majority of the members of the Cabinet are heads of spending Departments. They have interests in more roads and more everything. Anything that they spend builds up their own ego, their own reputation. There are only two possible people to stand up against it, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister, and the Chancellor, if he is alone, can do nothing. Therefore, I think that a debate earlier in the year, strongly supported in this House,


in which it was said that people do not want their taxes to go up and do want some curtailment in spending, would strengthen the hands of the Chancellor and of the Prime Minister in the task of keeping us on an even keel.

5.34 p.m.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: The right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) has played two roles in the House, the usual, familiar roles of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We have been so interested in his recent speeches on the need for public economy that we are apt to forget that at one time he spoke from the Government Front Bench as the spokesman of the Minister of Defence in charge of one of the Ministries responsible for the overall expenditure of a very vast sum of public money.
It is quite unfair to argue that hon. Members on this side of the House are not concerned about expenditure. During the last fortnight I have been trying to draw attention to the vast expenditure on the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. What assistance did we get from the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke)?

Mr. Robens: He was not here.

Mr. Hughes: He was not here. Where was the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro)?

Mr. Robens: He was not here.

Mr. Hughes: He was not here. Where was the right hon. Member for Flint, West? He was not here. I suggest that the vast sum of £1,600 million, which is such a large slice of our public expenditure, has been allowed to be voted with very little criticism and few pleas for reduction from hon. Members opposite.

Major H. Legge-Bourke: When the hon. Member is recalling who was present during the debates on the Service Estimates, I hope that he will bear in mind—I can vouch for this because I sat through most of them— that at no time during the detailed discussions on those Estimates were there more than five hon. Members on the benches opposite.

Mr. Hughes: I deplore and deprecate that as much as anyone, because if my

policy were accepted by the Labour Party we would vote against every one of those Estimates. That would bring about a three-line Whip and that would bring hon. Members to the House. I believe that once that course were adopted by the Labour Party we should get full-dress debates. As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, these Service Estimates debates have been a scandal from the point of view of the attendance of hon. Members on both sides of the House. I admit that he has been present, and he knows that I have been here.
How many hon. Members were present during the later proceedings of the debate on the Air Force Estimate of £500 million? Less than would fill the Viscount aircraft in which I travelled down from Prestwick. How many hon. Members were present to watch the expenditure on the Navy? Less than would be in an ordinary dinghy. How many were present watching the £400 million to £500 million expenditure on the Army? Less than would be in an ordinary bus. The foremost critics who have put their names to this Motion were not present continuously on any of those occasions.
I suggest that in debates on the Service Estimates there is a great need for hon. Members who are specialists to be present. The most searching criticism of the Navy Estimates did not come from me. It came from the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett). The hon. and gallant Gentleman not only made the point about a few admirals—the right hon. Member for Flint, West does not want to listen to this—but he made certain criticisms on the whole range of naval policy. He made searching criticisms of the whole concept of aircraft carriers in modern warfare.
I submit that if we had a Standing Committee dealing with the Navy, the Army and the Air Force, hon. Members who have had experience of those Services and who do not agree with my point of view would be able to contribute concrete and practical proposals which would result in a reduction of expenditure.
My first experiences in watching expenditure were in a very small town council where the bills and the receipts


used to be passed round the table of a committee of nine. Many hon. Members who have had experience of the working of municipal authorities know that there is far more scrutiny of municipal expenditure at the local authority level than there is at the national level, even when much smaller sums are involved.
I was also a member of the finance committee of a town council and then became a member of the finance committee of the county council. We used to receive with our agenda a foolscap list of all the main items of the various spending committees. The result was that in a procedure of that kind the party lines very often became blurred with the result that a real attempt was made to scrutinise what was waste and what was justifiable expenditure. Local authority, town council and county council administrations are absolute models of public administration compared with what goes on in this House.
I am all in favour of increasing the number of Standing Committees which would help to reduce expenditure when it was wasteful and would be able to encourage expenditure which was in the interests of the general community. Until we get the adaptation of the committee system to the affairs of the House there will never be any attempt at real democracy.
Everybody knows what (happens in this place. I represent a mining constituency, and, especially on this side of the House, we see a very large number of hon. Members representing mining constituencies coming in. After they have made their maiden speeches, what is left for them in the way of carrying on the general work of this House, except the rare opportunity of taking part for a few minutes in a debate perhaps once or twice a year? There are hon. Members who have vast experience of local government work and vast experience of the administration of the trade unions whose time is absolutely wasted as a result of the medieval and late nineteenth century traditions of this place.
I suggest that—perhaps not from the same motives as I have—the Motion contains the germ of very sound common sense, and that until we get the committee system of government as against the Cabinet system of govern-

ment we shall never get real democracy. The Cabinet system goes back to the time of William, when he wanted money for his Continental wars. It is absolutely incapable of dealing with the day-to-day problems and the ramifications of our modern society and modern industry. Until we get the committee system, in which all hon. Members will be able to use their experience and knowledge, democracy will be thwarted and handicapped in running our affairs.

5.41 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel W. H. Bromley -Davenport: All sections of the community are becoming very worried about the huge increase in national expenditure which is now automatic and goes through on the nod. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mon-mouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) said the other day that there is hardly any opportunity for discussing these huge sums. We cannot do so on the Budget because the Budget is concerned solely with raising revenue with which to meet these gigantic Bills, and indeed, nobody seems to care any more. Except today and the other day when my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) protested, nothing is said at all and these vast sums are passed through on the nod. A little later on we get the Budget and the taxpayer is then told how he is to meet these huge bills and the taxes he will have to pay —or else. The procedure is always the same. After the Budget we spend the whole summer arguing among ourselves how we are to decrease taxes, and we have all-night sittings in the process, and then during the rest of the year we plan how we are going to spend still more money.
Take today, for instance. If it had not been for the intervention of my noble Friend, instead of our discussing how we are to cut down these huge expenses and get better value for our money, or even just maintaining the present level of expenditure, this huge sum would have been slipped through on the nod and we should be discussing for the whole afternoon the subject of retirement pensions and other National Insurance benefits.
We all know that these are most worthy causes. Nevertheless, during that debate the Government will be urged


to spend still more and more money. The proceedings will follow the usual pattern. Her Majesty's Opposition, with one eye on the local Press, one eye on the national newspapers and both eyes on the ballot box in the far distance, will criticise Her Majesty's Government for not having done more. At the end of the debate, Her Majesty's Government will reply, saying what they have done and how much they have spent, how much more they have done and how much more they have spent than the Socialist Party spent, and how much more money they intend spending in the future. All parties are invited to be here at 9.30 p.m., and there will be a Division at 10 o'clock, and once again Her Majesty's Government will have a resounding victory and everybody will go home satisfied. This is just an example of how the Government are continually urged to increase expenditure. How often do we hear any voices raised or any suggestions made about how the money is to be obtained?
I now turn to national expenditure and why the people, and indeed all parties, are so deeply concerned. To go back to the dark days when the Socialists governed this country, in their penultimate Budget, that of 1950–51, their total expenditure above the line amounted to £3,804 million, but in the pre-election Budget they very wisely put up their expenditure by £800 million and increased the total to £4,685 million. They then went to the country, having called for a General Election.
But the Conservative Budget for 1959–60 is for an estimated expenditure of £6,428 million. That is nearly £2,000 million more than the Socialists spent in their last year in office. The same is true of the expenditure below the line. That is only the start. Let us examine some of the other bills that the taxpayer is being called upon to pay. He has to fork out an extra £181 million for the Supplementary Estimates, and, to sweeten him up and keep his eye in next year, he has been asked to pay a further £440 million. After that will come the Supplementary Estimates. So it all goes on ad infinitum.
That is bad enough, but worse is to follow. Look at the thousands of millions of pounds that the taxpayers have to pour into the nationalised industries.

Here, if anywhere, is an instance of throwing good money after bad. As far as I can see, there is no check at all on the expenditure of the nationalised industries. Indeed, the public are not allowed to know how they are spending their money. I have an excellent example of what has happened in my own constituency. I take the example of Mere College, which is happily situated within sight of the Knutsford Division Conservative headquarters. This building—

Mr. Arthur Tiley: Might I interrupt my hon. and gallant Friend?

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley - Davenport: It is not done to interrupt your own side. My hon. Friend should listen.

Mr. Tiley: I am forced to listen to my hon. and gallant Friend. I cannot do otherwise. I wondered whether he would tell us which eye he has on the local Press.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley - Davenport: I would merely reply by saying that the remark which my hon. Friend has made to me is highly infra dig.

Sir Kenneth Pickthorn: A hit below the belt?

Lieut. - Colonel Bromley - Davenport: Let me take the instance of Mere College at Knutsford. This is a building which has been purchased by the Gas Board as a staff college—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Gordon Touche): The hon. and gallant Gentleman cannot go into matters concerning the nationalised industries on this Motion.

Mr. Nabarro: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I intended to raise this matter at the beginning of our debate so that there could be no possible misunderstanding. Are you aware, in making the pronouncement that you have just made, of the contents of Section 42 (1) of the Finance Act, 1956? The final words of the subsection in the context of the capital investment programme of the nation are:
and the Treasury may issue to those Ministers, out of the Consolidated Fund, such sums as are necessary to enable them to make the advances.


Section 42 (2) contains the words:
Advances made under this section shall not together exceed the sum of seven hundred million pounds …
from the Consolidated Fund. As I have been waiting here for three hours to make a speech on the nationalised industries, I hope that you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, will not rule me out of order.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Colonel Bromley-Davenport.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: I hope that I may develop this point shortly, because it is—

Mr. Nabarro: On a point of Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I shall have to await the hon. Member's speech before making a Ruling on it.

Mr. Nabarro: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Do I understand that you rule that my interpretation of the position is correct?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I have given no Ruling on the subject. I shall wait until the hon. Member makes his speech.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: If I may continue, what usually happens when I speak here is that there are more columns in HANSARD taken up with interruptions than with my own speech. I hope that hon. Members, at least on my own side, will allow me to continue.
To return to the subject of Mere College at Knutsford, so happily situated. As I explained, this building was purchased by the Gas Board as a staff college for advanced meter readers. Here the pupils have advanced from the peaked-cap stage, with notebooks and pencils, measuring therms, or whatever they are called, and watts—they have to be versatile—and have graduated to the higher and broader strata of the gas world. I do not say that this college is not a good thing. It is, indeed, a very good thing, since the gas industry is here copying private enterprise, and anything which can be done to make the nationalised industries more efficient is certainly more than justified.
The Gas Board has a lovely house there, lovely gardens and drive, beautiful furnishings and everything decorated in first-class style. All that is as it should

be, but the point is that the taxpayer wants to know how much the building costs to buy, equip and furnish and how much it costs to run and maintain it, with its staff and all the rest of it. It may be of interest to all hon. Members, whatever their party, to know that the taxpayer has no means at all of finding out. The Gas Board refuses to divulge the information.
For eighteen months or so I have tried to obtain this information from the Minister. In correspondence, I asked him point-blank how the public can ever find out how much this building cost, and what the other expenses are. The reply I received this morning is that the public
have no statutory or prescriptive right to the information.

r. J. T. Price: A very dusty answer.

Lieut. - Colonel Bromley - Davenport: That may be so, but I feel, and I am sure my hon. Friends feel, that the public having paid for it, have a perfect right to know how much it costs. This is just one instance which can be repeated over the whole range of the nationalised industries, and, in my opinion, it shows clearly that there is not a proper check on expenditure.
What return do the taxpayers see for all the money they pour into the nationalised industries? Worse services, more and greater losses and increased costs. Then we have demands for higher wages—quite right, of course, in the case of the railways—and then up goes the cost of the end-product. Next, people start asking for more money to meet these increases, and up goes the cost of living. Once again we have the vicious spiral of inflation upon us. No Government in the world, no matter of what party, can keep down the cost of living when the price of fuel and transport keeps rising.
We are told that our standard of living will double over the next twenty years. I hope that that is true. I have every confidence that it is. But at the present rate of expenditure the taxpayers of this country feel that their rate of taxation will certainly go up twice more. They can see no prospect of it ever coming down.
I have some very constructive suggestions to make about how we could cut down the amount of money which we are spending. I have time for only one constructive suggestion which came to me from someone who was a Cabinet Minister and who used to sit on the Front Bench, one of the most able Conservative administrators we ever had. I cannot say what he told me word for word, but I will put it in my own way. He said that we should consider our own Front Bench. All our Ministers are extremely able, extremely hard working and highly intelligent people. All of them, quite rightly, are intensely ambitious. They want to make a success of their Departments and, in doing so, they want to get hold of as much money as they can. They spend it, and then they go cap in hand to the Chancellor at the end of the year to ask for more and more money. The result is that, every year, we have huge Supplementary Estimates.
It was suggested to me that that procedure should be stopped. I know that there must be exceptions, of course, but Ministers should, on the whole, make correct estimates and stick to them. If a Minister goes cap in hand to the Treasury to ask for more money, instead of receiving what he asks for, having a pat on the back, being promoted and receiving the Order of the British Empire, he should be given a "raspberry" and the "order of the boot." Let us reward those who spend the least and make the greatest success within their means, not those who spend the most.
I have here three pages of the most wonderful further constructive suggestions, but I will make just two more points. I ask the Government, when they are faced with further demands for more of the taxpayer's money to be spent, to remember that they have truly said that the taxpayer prefers to spend his own money in his own way rather than have someone come along to spend it for him. Taxpayers bitterly resent being asked to spend less all the time just as the Government go on spending more and more. I should like to hear the Government say, in reply to requests for more money, one short sentence, which I have never yet heard used on either side of the House, "Sorry. You cannot have it because the taxpayer cannot afford it".

5.58 p.m.

Major H. Legge-Bourke: I am sure that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Knutsford (Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport) has delighted the House with the speech he just made. In the course of it, he fulfilled a dual role. On the one hand, he aired a genuine grievance from his own constituency, and, on the other, he drew attention to the machinery whereby we in this House control expense.
I congratulate my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount HiracMngbrooke) on the opportunity he has given us for this debate by putting down the Amendment, to which I was very glad to add my name. He has enabled us to have a fairly non-party debate on the basis that this is primarily a House of Commons matter. Two points have been made from the benches opposite which are perfectly legitimate points and, certainly in this debate, perfectly fair.
Perhaps we have tended to overlook the machinery available to us at present. The hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) was absolutely right; hon. Members simply are not taking full advantage of the opportunities open to them on voting on the Estimates. They have not taken the best advantage there—on the Service Estimates particularly—and my noble Friend and some others of us have been working over the last couple of weeks— I think without collusion; certainly on my part—to probe the Estimates that have been put before us.
I was horrified yesterday to hear the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) allege that as we had carried out this process we had automatically turned ourselves into rebels. I think that I know as much about being a party rebel as does any hon. Member in the House, but, from the Parliamentary point of view, I certainly do not believe that it is right for anybody to assume that an hon. Member on the back benches on the Government side who chooses to ask questions of the Minister introducing an Estimate— Supplementary or otherwise—at once becomes disloyal to his right hon. Friend.
I should have thought that it was the primary duty of the official Opposition


to do that probing—the primary duty— but if, in our judgment—and it is my belief at present—the Opposition of the day are completely failing to carry out their duty as an Opposition, because of internal divisions and interests lying outside the House altogether, it automatically falls to Government back benchers to do the job for them.
My own small efforts in this matter over the last two weeks have disclosed two rather surprising facts to me and, I believe, to the House. In the first instance, I discovered that a Minister introducing an Estimate did not know the meaning of the explanation given in the Estimate he was introducing.
Secondly, I discovered only yesterday that a certain payment being made in one of the Colonial Territories would be made only if certain other things happened. There was no indication of that in the Estimate, beyond it saying that the payment was subject to an agreement that had not yet come about. It said that so much money would then be required, but there was no indication of where the money would go if it was not required. As a result of probing, we managed to get the answer to that one. Hon. Members are not at present using the opportunities available to them for probing the Estimates for the coming year.
Turning to the expenditure that has already been incurred, I should particularly like to take up the point made by my noble Friend today, when he suggested that we might consider the recommendation of Sir Gilbert Campion, as he then was, of a Committee of Expenditure. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden) also followed this up. It may have escaped the memory of the House that, during the war, the Select Committee on National Expenditure presented to the House its Sixteenth Report, which dealt with matters akin to those of which we have spoken today. I understand that there was no Select Committee on Estimates throughout the war; that during those years we had this Select Committee on National Expenditure.
I am a little doubtful whether Lord Campion's recommendation about amalgamating the Estimates Committee

and the Public Accounts Committee would achieve quite what hon. Members desire. My own belief is that it is very important that there should be hon. Members common to both Committees. That is very important. Were we to amalgamate the two Committees I am a little concerned lest the one Committee should find its task too great to fulfil successfully within one financial year.
It is most important that that should be capable of achievement. If we were to have a joint Committee on Estimates and Public Accounts that was unable within a financial year to report in time for any of its information or recommendations to be of the slightest use before the money was actually spent, we might just as well not have it at all.
That brings me to my principal point. I do not believe that the difficulties so clearly put forward by my noble Friend and by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West can be solved by altering the procedure of Parliament, as Parliament at present exists. I believe that as fast as we altered the procedure of Parliament, and especially of the House of Commons as it exists today, so we should create new difficulties and anomalies.
The truth of the matter is that the burden of State affairs today is so enormous that Parliament, as now constructed, is incapable of carrying out all the probing and the examination that it ought to carry out if the taxpayer is to be properly protected. In other words, we must have constitutional reform before we can hope to get a sensible procedural reform.
I am very glad to see that both my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary are present, because I believe that both of them have paid some attention to matters I have raised on this subject in the past. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) will remember, but I hope that the House will forgive me if I remind it that, in the past, I have taken interest in the machinery of Government. As recently as 1956 I raised the whole question of a periodic review of the machinery of government.
In the Report to which I have just referred—the Sixteenth Report of the


Select Committee on National Expenditure, Session 1941–42—there is a recommendation in page 38 that reads:
Your Committee are satisfied that the detailed and continuing review of the efficiency and organisation of the Civil Service is not a function which can be fully and permanently discharged as a part of the necessarily wide activities of Select Committees on National Expenditure. So important and extensive is the task that it would demand the individual attention of a special body. Your Committee, therefore, recommend the creation of a new Select Committee, to be appointed sessionally under Standing Orders, which should conduct on behalf of the House a continuing review of the machinery of government with special reference to the economic use of personnel, and should report to the House from time to time.
The Report also said that:
The new committee would require an Assessor comparable in status with the Comptroller and Auditor General …
It is obvious that it would need some officer of that kind. The Select Committee said:
The Assessor would have to maintain close touch with the O. and M. Division of the Treasury …
At that time I reminded my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, who was then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, of these recommendations. He said that sufficient was going on inside the Civil Service itself— but not Parliamentarily—on the machinery of government to make it unnecessary for those recommendations to be implemented. My belief is that if we are to have a hope of improving our procedure we have, as a House, to consider the whole machinery of Government, and in particular that part of the machinery of Government which concerns the Treasury.
I want to put one specific detailed question about this. My right hon. Friend will remember that in July, 1956, an important innovation took place inside the Treasury when Sir Edward—now Lord— Bridges retired from being head of the Civil Service. The then Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, presumably after consultation with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is now my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, made an important statement during Questions on 26th July. He announced that the duties of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury were to be split into two, and that there were to be two Joint Permanent

Secretaries to the Treasury, the one to be Secretary to the Cabinet, Sir Norman Brook, and the other, Sir Roger Makins, to be official head of the Treasury.
It was an innovation, and I believe that it ought to have led to an improvement in the general supervision of Government Departments, and in particular the spending Departments. I hope it did, but we see that Sir Roger Makins has already been given another position, and we have not yet been told whether it is proposed to replace him with another man, or again to combine the job under one man. I should like my right hon. Friend to say whether it is proposed—as I hope it is— to continue the duplication, and not to restore the unified position.

Sir E. Boyle: I can deal with that point now. Sir Frank Lee has succeeded to Sir Roger Makins' position, and the position of Sir Norman Brook remains as it was during the time of Sir Roger Makins.

Major Legge-Bourke: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and delighted to hear that. I am sure that is a wise decision. It enables me to go a little further on the question of constitutional reform about which I want to talk.
The State now intervenes in so much of industry, and in many of the activities outside the House, very often in an executive position, that the time has come when we ought to try to hive off the responsibility of this House for the detailed actions of the Civil Service Departments concerned. The proposition to which I have given considerable thought over the years, and which I am not expounding purely for the purpose of producing something novel, is based primarily on the concept that at present exists between the Established Church of this country and this House. There we have the Church Assembly with an Ecclesiastical Committee reporting to Parliament, and on the whole Parliament accepting the Report of the Ecclesiastical Committee, although having the right to question hon. Members who are on that Committee and who introduce the Orders into this House. It is that sort of concept which I have in mind to deal with such bodies as the nationalised industries.
The time has come when we must set up something in the nature of a third


House of Parliament. When we were debating Members' salaries some time ago I mentioned that over the years we had seen Parliament develop, but the moment we had universal franchise and the "flapper" vote in this country no more progress took place in the constitutional reform of Parliament. We have now reached the stage when we are no longer able to control the estimating and expenditure of Government Departments as we should and the position this year is worse than in any other year that I can remember. It is because this matter has come to a head in this way that I feel obliged to put forward some constructive proposals.
I do not believe that it is fair to expect any Chancellor of the Exchequer successfully to administer his Department, or to protect the public purse, if he can never know what additional demands will come from certain quarters. I have always believed that there is no surer way of making people act responsibly than to give them responsibility. If this Industrial House—perhaps that is the best way to refer to it—to deal with the nationalised industries and other kindred bodies, were to be voted a lump sum each year by Parliament, and there ware no question of any more money being voted during the year, the Chancellor would know where he was. He would be able to budget more accurately and in the end be able to protect the taxpayers' interests far better than he is able to do now.
I realise that this could be regarded as a revolutionary proposal. It could also be regarded as a proposal likely to lower the stature of this House. There is a trend for the House to be very jealous of its dignities and privileges, and, with all humility, I do not think that the House is ever more ridiculous than when it is trying to stand on its dignity. We have to be humble enough to realise that the task we are trying to perform is beyond us.
As has already been said, there are too many committees and far too little implementation of the recommendations of many of these committees. If we set up any more committees it will complicate the task and make control remoter 'than it is today. For that reason I believe that I was right when, the last time Members' salaries were increased, I said (hat I would agree to that increase

so long as I was assured by my right hon. Friend that full consideration would be given to the question of constitutional reform. I have yet to get that assurance. I have yet to see any signs of any constructive work having been done. I do not wish my patience to be exhausted, and I am only sorry that I have so nearly exhausted the patience of the House this afternoon.

6.19 p.m.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Having sat here for three hours and fifty minutes, and being of a fairly observant nature through having had to accept great responsibility in one of the largest industrial establishments in this country, I am able to look round and remember who was in the House when the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) spoke, who came in afterwards, who spoke, who went out again, who has come in from another place not many yards away from here, who is prepared to make a speech and who has since left the Chamber.
I am not complaining, but we ought to approach the subject of the proceedings of this House with a greater degree of responsibility. There can be no cut and thrust, and if anyone doubts anything that I am about to say I hope that he will be good enough to say so. I want to make it clear that I am not asking for legislation. I am taking advantage of Parliamentary procedure for the purpose of raising one of the deepest burning grievances of our people. In order that no one should misunderstand where I stand—because I have never tried to ride two horses, or even three, as they do in the circus—I want to say that I remember the roots where I come from. We should try to be true to our people. That should be our duty in this House.
I have a great deal of sympathy with what the hon. Member for Dorset, South said, provided that those who support him do so because they believe that there is a need for scrutinising expenditure, especially in these days when we are spending more money than ever in the history of our nation, and also provided that they will join with us in examining and scrutinising the gigantic arms expenditure—amounting to £1,600 million— which none of them has mentioned during this debate.
This country is now treating its sick, disabled and unemployed in a relatively worse manner than any other industrial country in the world, with the exception of three. If any hon. Member doubts that, I hope to carry him with me by producing official figures, reports and statistical evidence, and quoting from The Times and the reports of the International Labour Office. This country has embarked upon a gigantic expenditure of £1,600 million on arms at a time when millions of pounds are being made by take-over gamblers and by rich directors, in the form of compensation, and when we are treating our sick, disabled and unemployed in the way that I have already indicated. It is because of this that I placed upon the Order Paper a Motion which my hon. Friend the Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown), who is in close touch with the miners and the working classes in the Wigan area, was eager to second. We sat here during the whole of one Friday without being able to speak. I am not complaining, because when a Member has had a few years' experience of this House he learns to take things philosophically, and providing that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen are playing the game with each other, within reason, we learn to take a good deal of what we had to contend with on that Friday. That is the end of that as far as I am concerned.
I shall produce official figures to prove that during the past fifteen years this country has been left sadly behind most other European countries, the United States and countries in other continents in the matter of the relative amount of the national income spent upon the sick, disabled and unemployed. If there is an accident on the road most people who see it will rush to help whoever is involved. During the last war, whenever a bomb dropped nearby I went as quickly as I could to see what assistance I could give. I found that most other people were very decent, and they wanted to give all the service and assistance they could.
If it is right for individuals to act in that way, surely the time has come, in the mid-twentieth century, when those individual righteous motives should find a collective expression in assisting the sick, the disabled and the unemployed

who are in their present position through no fault of their own. This philosophy has been preached for 2,000 years. Some of us who have taken part in two world wars—not in mere talking but in action —cannot help but remember the promises which were made, and our indignation begins to burn within our blood because these promises have not been implemented.
The first principle that I want to set out in bold type is that in the mid-twentieth century, especially in a country like Britain which claims to be the most democratically developed in the world, it should be the State's duty to do collectively what most men and women will do individually, namely, to assist to the maximum those who are sick, unemployed or disabled. We all worked together to win two world wars and to maintain full employment. Most people made their contributions to save this country and to maximise its exports, and if they suffer through sickness, domestic accidents and unemployment, or disablements in the pits or the potteries, we ought to go to their assistance as we promised to do in two world wars.
If any hon. Member doubts what I am saying I would refer him, first, to the reply given by the Financial Secretary to a Question I asked with regard to expenditure on the social services in 1950, 1955 and 1956. The position has become even worse now than it was then. I am going to refer to the analysis made in The Times on 16th June last year. That newspaper has made constant criticisms in leading articles, but it was not prepared to print a letter setting out the facts in order that our people could consider them. According to the Financial Secretary, the total expenditure on the social services in 1950 amounted to 18·2 per cent. of our national income, in 1955 it was 176 per cent., and in 1956 it was again 17·6 per cent. According to figures I shall produce later the position has worsened since then. Well might The Times say:
Real disposable income a head of population has grown by a quarter since 1948 (when, however, it was still below the 1938 level), but the real standard of public subsistence has remained virtually static.
The pre-war standards about which The Times writes were a legacy of workhouse standards, when the people of the class to which I belong were treated as


criminals and had to apply cap in hand for the mere pittance they were given in those days. In the mid-twentieth century we allow our sick—who are as good as any of us—our disabled and our unemployed, to live on pre-1914 Poor Law standards. If any hon. Members doubt this, I shall produce official figures from the National Assistance Board Report to prove every word that I am saying.
Some of us are still smarting under the blow struck against the workers in 1931. I am friendly with some of the employers, as individuals, and I respect the contribution which they make, but as a federation that is the policy for which they have been responsible in my lifetime. The British employers struck a deadly blow in 1931. Now they have the audacity to suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that Surtax and many other taxes upon them should be eased. But in the memorandum which they submitted there is nothing about the sick, the disabled, the unemployed or those living on retirement pensions.
Hon. Members on this side of the House should rouse themselves and examine the situation in order that we may be worthy of those who created our party. At the present time the sick, unemployed and disabled people in this country are endeavouring to manage on benefits based on pre-war standards which, in turn, were based on the Poor Law conceptions of the Elizabethan period. Our standard of benefits is the lowest in the world, with the exception of three other countries. During the past fifteen years, since the Report of the Beveridge Committee, we have been left behind by other countries. I do not believe in just speaking about these things. It is my desire to reason in such a way that my arguments will convince right hon. and hon. Members. Therefore, if any hon. Member doubts what I am saying I hope he will be good enough to say so and give me the opportunity to produce official figures to support my arguments.
Germany was supposed to have lost two world wars and we were supposed to have won them. Yet the proportion of the national income in Germany which is apportioned to the social services, especially for the sick and for retired pensioners, is far higher than in this country, and it is for that reason that I

raise this matter tonight. My hon. Friends will agree that seldom do the justifiable grievances of the organised workers find expression at the annual conference of the Trades Union Congress. But, despite that, it is now only six months ago that a resolution was carried with complete unanimity. It was moved by the National Union of Mine-workers and seconded by the Inland Revenue Staff Federation. Here is an extract from the Resolution:
This Congress calls upon the General Council to make urgent representations to the Government;—(a) pointing out the completely inadequate level of benefits under the National Insurance and Industrial Injuries Acts; (b) calling for a fundamental examination so as to establish a decent level of subsistence …
I am not speaking for myself, but recounting what was said at that conference of industrial workers by the representatives of the people who have maintained the maximum amount of exports from this country in order to keep us going.
According to figures which I have in my possession, in 1959 the average earnings of directors in this country was £90 a week. For industrial workers the average is £11 8s. 6d. and for a man £13 19s., which represents an average increase over the 1947 figures of approximately 120 per cent. I do not think those earnings are high enough. But listen to these figures. A man who is sick receives £2 10s. a week. With a small number of exceptions, unemployed men receive £2 10s. A man may be injured in a coal mine, it may be through a fall of coal, because that kind of accident cannot be avoided no matter how perfect be the organisation. The maximum amount such a man would receive is £4 10s. a week. All these people have paid their insurance contributions, plus taxes, and they have worked hard at the same time.
I feel bitter about the fact that because of this scandalous treatment, 68 per cent. of those people on National Assistance already receive National Insurance benefits. Have I made that clear? Is it crystal clear that 68 per cent. of those who receive National Insurance benefits receive National Assistance? Those benefits are low and they have to apply for National Assistance which is on the degrading scale to which I have already referred.
Those who have shared my experiences will agree that credit should be given where it is due. The administration of National Assistance today is heavenly compared with what it was when I was a boy. Under no circumstances would we speak critically of the officers of the National Assistance Board. We are criticising, first, the Government and, secondly, the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance who have been prepared to acquiesce in this scandalous and disgraceful treatment of our people. This Parliament has been in existence for five months, but no action has been taken to remedy these matters. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite may laugh, but I would remind them of the promises which they made during the General Election campaign. I would remind them that he who laughs last laughs longest, and that includes those hon. Members near the Dispatch Box. We have had a little too much of them.
The logic of what I am saying is that most people in our country have been compensated because of the change in the value of money. The inflation during the past fifteen years has been eased by increases in income, or something of that kind. But those who exist on benefits have not received the same assistance.
I know that the Minister will compare what was done by a Labour Government and tell the House that this Government have done so and so. I accept that and I plead guilty, and therefore that absolves me straight away. Those who spoke in this way when other Governments were in power are in a strong position to make similar speeches today. I wish to emphasise that many people are enjoying increases in wages and salaries, but, relatively speaking, those who exist on benefits have not received an increase which compensates for the change in the value of money.
In my view, by their acceptance of the Beveridge Report, all parties undertook to fix a Plimsoll line. The Leader of the House will remember that all parties agreed to fix such a line and to say that no one in the country should be expected to have to live below it. The Poor Law and Elizabethan standards were the Plimsoll line for those who were sick, unemployed and disabled. As the

benefits were fixed too low in 1946 and are still too low as a result of inflationary effects, and because of the increase in productivity and living standards, the time has arrived when we should demand 100 per cent. increase in the benefits for the sick, unemployed and disabled.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member began by assuring me that he was not going to seek legislation. That is the trouble, for he has now gone over his own Plimsoll line. Those benefits could not be increased except by legislation.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I shall not answer in the way another hon. Member whom you were good enough to guide answered. I respect your Ruling, but I am asking for an inquiry into these low standards. That would not need legislation. I am asking the Leader of the House to accept responsibility and, if he thinks there is anything in the figures I have produced, to make an immediate inquiry with a view to taking action later.
Approximately 70 per cent. of those on National Assistance are now receiving National Insurance benefit. This is after all we have said for so long about the need for caring for the sick, the aged and the widows. In case anyone should doubt what I have been saying, I wish to pay tribute to the Statistical Department of the House of Commons. We have some very fine servants working behind the scenes. Occasionally we ought to give them a pat on the back—[Laughter] Does any hon. Member want to interrupt?

Mr. Tiley: We were merely applauding the fact that the hon. Member was patting on the back an hon. Member in front of him for whom we have very much regard.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Then we can apply the spirit of mutuality, because we all accept that. Those of us who are a little younger are trying to be worthy of the kind of man referred to.
I went to the Statistical Department and told the people there of my problems. I have never been better treated nor more courteously. As a result, I was given certain facts which I have here. Unlike a Minister, I cannot say that I shall have those facts circulated


in the OFFICIAL REPORT, but I will show them to any hon. Member who would like to see them. Our case is so strong and unanswerable that if only hon. and right hon. Members take the trouble to do a little research work they can find that everything I have been saying is true. I also have The Times newspaper of 3rd December, 1958, giving more evidence to show the correctness of this reasoning In The Times Engineering Review of February 1955, will be found more concrete figures.
Finally, there is the work of the Statistical Department of this House showing that, in proportion to the national income, this country is now spending less on the sick, the unemployed and the disabled than any country in the world, with the exception of three. It is on that that I want to speak. Benefits as a percentage of national income amount, in Italy, to 13·7 per cent., in France to 11·7 per cent. and in Norway to 7·6 per cent. In the United Kingdom they amounted to 4·3 per cent. in 1949 and to 4·2 per cent. in 1955. The position in the United States is not so bad as figures suggest because, in the United States, there are not only national Government benefits but Federal Government benefits and the trade unions also negotiate what are known as "fringe benefits." I must mention that in order to put these figures into correct perspective. Public expenditure on the social services in Britain as a percentage of the gross national product has been worsening during the past fifteen years. For these reasons I have spoken in this way.
Those of us who have seen dilettantes appearing both on the B.B.C. Television and I.T.V. from time to time often wonder why problems of this kind are not dealt with. It was with thoughts of that kind in mind that I considered that the proceedings of this House should be televised. I know that at present most hon. and right hon. Members are against me on that question. I do not mind that. That kind of thing has been my lot throughout life. I have seen proposals made and rejected, but ten or twenty years later, as a result of the slow process of evolution in democracy, I have seen those things come about.
I remember the days when there were very few like me in this House. I have seen the change take place and now we

are producing men and women worthy of the class to which we belong. I have seen many who, because of their outlook and ideas, are now beginning to play their part. I hope our party, as part of our movement, will be worthy of those who have built it and worthy of the historic role it should be playing in the history and development of life.
Because of these ideas, I thought the time had arrived when the I.T.V. and the B.B.C. should be democratised so that people could see who sit on these benches, how they play their part, how they speak and how they are received. Honest men fear nobody. If the limelight were to be directed on to this House at present constituents of hon. Members would be able to see who is speaking, who is listening, who is smiling cynically and who is listening with great respect. I do not mind that idea not being accepted because, as sure as I stand here, that will eventually be done. We have seen great changes in this country.
If changes do not come in in one way by evolution they come another way. Those of us who have not much to lose, who live in the same kind of houses and have the same standard of life as the people we represent, know how the people are thinking. We cannot do much at present about unemployment, but the burning grievances are there.
When an accident occurs people rush to the rescue, as I saw people rush to rescue a child drowning in the canal the other day. The time has arrived when Britain should be doing that collectively. We ought to be saving those who are sick and those who are unemployed and disabled, and we ought to be assisting the retirement pensioners to a greater extent. We have promised this in two world wars. Our party stands for it. It is for these reasons that I have taken advantage of the opportunity to speak on the Bill which provides us with a Parliamentary right to submit the grievances of the people for the consideration of the Government before we vote Supply.

6.51 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler): The major part of my remarks will be devoted to the Amendment of my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South


(Viscount Hinchingbrooke) but before I refer to that, to his speech and to other speeches on the same subject, I should like to refer to the speeches of the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith).
While I should like to feel that all the matters to which the hon. Member for Paddington, North referred were the responsibility of the Home Secretary, in fact a great many of them fall outside my purview, and all I can undertake to do, after examining a note which he has been kind enough to give me, is to examine the possibility of further co-ordination of social policy. This I will do, not so much in my capacity as Home Secretary as in my capacity as a member of the Government. That I shall be glad to do.
I have examined the situation in a preliminary way by a rapid contact which I made with the L.C.C. this afternoon. The L.C.C. says that it accepts the Young-husband Committee's Report on the importance of the co-ordination of social policy and that it sees nothing in this field which it could not itself help to meet. I have similarly made a rapid inquiry about the position in North Paddington. There I find that certain cases of difficulty are examined in a co-ordinated way, as the hon. Member wishes. But I think that this is rather too big a subject to raise further on the Bill and therefore, if he permits me, I will send him a report after studying his contribution to the debate.
We are always glad to see the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South. It is indeed a marvellous reinforcement of his sincerity that he has the Statistical Department of the Library of the House to support his arguments. I hope that some of us will have the opportunity, if not in the OFFICIAL REPORT at any rate in a private capacity, of reading the material which he has collected. It is voluminous, as is quite apparent, but 1 observe from the immense amount of material that he has collected that he appears to have reserved some for another occasion, because his speech did not seem to go quite to the length that some of us had expected after seeing the material which he had in his hand. That is a

very human thing to do in addressing the House—always appear to have more notes than the ultimate speech which one delivers.
The hon. Member's speech included a reference to the efficiency of the National Assistance Board, and that I should like to acknowledge. The administration of the Board has been revolutionised in recent times under a variety of Administrations, and this is a good occasion to pay tribute to its work. Apart from that, I should like further to study the comparisons, the statistics and the information which the hon. Member gave with his usual sincerity.
I come to the Amendment moved by my noble Friend which, as he said, reproduces much of a debate of which, for greater accuracy, I have obtained a copy. This was the debate of 24th March, 1920, almost exactly forty years ago. The Amendment which my noble Friend has put down is the same as an Amendment put down then by Mr. Edward Wood. I think it has been apparent to many of us who have been taking part in the debate that there is some substance in what the noble Lord says. I think we all feel—I am sure that this is shared by hon. Members on both sides of the House—that there is something not quite right in the manner in which the House of Commons examines Supply. Had there not been so many points concerned with House of Commons procedure, the debate was to be answered by the Financial Secretary. I do not intend to make a speech on financial policy but will confine myself to questions on procedure of the House, which I hope will satisfy my noble Friend.
The first point he made, about Treasury control, is contained in his Amendment. As he knows, a Committee has been appointed under Lord Plowden to inquire into methods of Treasury control. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot designate the date on which it will report, but it will report not too far from now. As this Committee is sitting, with some capable assessors and aided by officials, and as it is going very thoroughly into the matter, I hope that my noble Friend and the House in general will await the report of this inquiry before we take further the question of Treasury control.


I come to the main question which my noble Friend raised, which is to be found in the second part of his Amendment:
… as well … as by the informed and effective exercise of the authority of this House 
If hon. Members examine the report of the debate and Mr. Chamberlain's reply to the debate almost exactly forty years ago, they will find that he refers to the great difficulty of the House applying its mind to the details of the Estimates.

Sir James Duncan: Which Chamberlain?

Mr. Butler: It was Austen Chamberlain. He referred to the great difficulty of the House controlling the details of the Estimates. He said:
… and the Government, with such influence as it had, kept together a majority,
—that sounds very familiar today—
and that majority beat down at length the persistent inquiries of certain inquisitive Members as to the number and salaries, say, of the Rat-catchers at the Royal Palaces, the expenditure on the Royal Yacht, and things of that kind, which took up an infinite amount of time."—(OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th March, 1920; Vol. 127, c. 522.]
He went on to say that there are distinct limitations to a general control of expenditure by the House sitting as a body. He said that, nevertheless, the Government would look into the matter and set up some kind of machinery which might help the House in general in this task.
The first problem to which we must apply ourselves in response to my noble Friend, therefore, is the extent to which the House as a whole should undertake this task of Supply and the extent to which we should delegate it to one of our existing committees, either enlarged or amalgamated, or the extent to which we should create a new committee which should report to the House.
In this connection I must take up a reference to myself by my noble Friend, when he referred to some answers which I gave at Business time when he intervened to ask a question. I then drew attention to the fact that the Opposition had for many years themselves had the right to choose the subject on Supply Days. The Opposition has had twenty days since 1895 upon which they have had this right, and I think that we should

consider very carefully before we alter any such system.
That does not deal with the fundamental point made by my noble Friend. After the Report of our own Select Committee of 1946, eight extra days were suggested, to take in the A Votes, the Votes on Report for the Services, the Civil Estimates and those other extra Supplies which are now included in the six extra days allotted by the Labour Government at the time. Six extra days were allotted when Mr. Herbert Morrison, now Lord Morrison, was Leader of the House.
Those days are now not as free as was expected, because they are taken up largely by the A Votes and the other financial business to which I have referred, with two days for Supplementary Estimates. There are now, therefore, twenty-six days on Supply, the extra six days being somewhat taken up in the manner I have suggested, two by Supplementary Estimates and the others by the Navy, Army and Air Force Votes, etc. It does not look as if there is very much hope there, unless we go back to the eight days suggested by our own Committee of the House in 1946, for latitude to the House for a day on Supply.
It looks as though, in approaching the matter of what opportunities there are for the House, we should turn to the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch). That suggestion was to the effect that there should be a split Vote on Account and possibly a debate in the autumn, half-way through the financial year, his point being—he having served at the Treasury, as I have done—that we all know that by Christmas the Estimates are decided and that by October and November they are beginning to be decided; and that that is the critical time.
I do not intend to come down on any final decision in this speech. I am only indicating that we must have some general conversation on what we should do next year. I should like to point out that the learned Clerk to the House, in his evidence to the Select Committee on Procedure, also suggested that something might be done about splitting the time, that is to say a half-way house for consideration of Supply. As this idea


also arose in the evidence of Lord Campion, to part of which the noble Lord referred, I think that we should bear in mind in any conversations that we have the possibility of considering Supply at an earlier date, before things are finally decided, in order that the House of Commons as a whole may be brought into the matter.
I must point out that this must be a matter upon which the Opposition point of view must be considered as well as that of my hon. Friends, as fundamentally they have, or should have, the same objective, namely, to consider Supply. I suggest that if we have any conversations we should have them with the Opposition as well as with some of my hon. Friends and that we should see how we can find an easier opportunity for a general day to be given earlier for a general consideration by the House, in general, of the Estimates.
That, I think, is not enough. I think that we have to apply ourselves to the question of how a more detailed consideration of the Estimates can be made by this House. After our debate on procedure, I discussed the matter with the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn), now sitting on the back bench, who has taken an interest in procedure, and I listened with interest to his and the noble Lord's references to Lord Campion's evidence and views.
The suggestion has been made that we should amalgamate the Committee on Estimates and the Committee on Public Accounts. At first sight I should like to say that I do not think that we should take away from the excellent work which the Committee of Public Accounts now does, post hoc, that is, after the date. I do not think that it would be very easy to amalgamate that with the Committee on Estimates and to make a job of it. I would rather examine the possibility of either some enlargement of the Committee on Estimates or of some variants under which the Committee on Estimates or, as was suggested by Mr. Chamberlain in 1920, a Committee on Expenditure, should have an opportunity of considering administrative policy earlier in the year.

Mr. S. Silverman: The right hon. Gentleman will remember that in the debates on the evidence that we had

as to the Select Committee of 1945 and 1946 arising out of Lord Campion's suggestion, two points were made with which perhaps the Leader of the House could deal. One was that we had some experience of the kind of thing he had in mind in the committee on war expenditure during the war. As I understood his evidence, he saw a flaw in our present procedure in that the Committee on Estimates considers money before it is spent, the Committee of Public Accounts considers money after it is spent, but there is no authority, apparently, for reviewing public expenditure.

Mr. Butler: As far as I know from examining the terms of reference of the Committee on Estimates, there is no body which considers what I described as administrative policy, and that is a gap which we are gradually working towards in the course of this debate and in the course of other considerations which we shall have later.
In my view, there ought to be three matters reviewed in the exchange in these discussions. First, whether the House of Commons can have an opportunity as a whole of considering Supply, as recommended by my right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West, at an earlier period of the year. Secondly, whether, by discussion with the Opposition, any alternative method can be found for Supplementary Estimates or consideration of Supply under the general allotted scheme for an increased allotted scheme. I think that is quite fair. The third consideration is whether a more detailed examination could be made, preferably not by spoiling the work of the Committee of Public Accounts but either by considering the work of the Committee on Estimates and having it either larger or having it given some delegated powers, or by an alternative Standing Committee on Expenditure, based more on the Campion model and on the evidence of 1946–47. I suggest that if we were to look at this we would then make some progress.

Sir Peter Agnew: Suppose that an additional Committee is set up or that the Estimates Committee gives more time to considering this matter of Supply, that merely increases potentially the number of reports that this Committee or these Committees will make. It leaves untouched


the problem of finding occasions when there will be a right to discuss the content of those reports on the Floor of the House.

Mr. Butler: I was coming to that as my last point. It is a fact, and we must acknowledge it, that the House of Commons really prefers discussing policy and politics. That is the experience which I have derived after thirty years here, and it is undoubtedly true. Nevertheless, if we are to have more detailed examination in a Committee, there must as a pendant or balance to that be some method of giving a greater opportunity in the House for discussion when we receive the reports. I suggest that if we have this discussion about a more detailed system of looking at the reports, there should be some chance of their being considered on the Floor of the House. Then we should have a detailed consideration and the grand jury of the Commons would examine them in detail.

Mr. J. Grimond: If it is possible to arrange for a discussion of these reports on the Floor of the House, I think that it was accepted in the 1920s that if the Government were forced to reduce the Estimates as a result of these reports they should not treat that as a matter of confidence; it should be a House of Commons matter. On small matters they accepted certain reductions in the Estimates as a result of House of Commons opinion. Would it still be the opinion of the Leader of the House that this would still be accepted?

Mr. Butler: I think that one would have to examine the instance on its own merits, because I can imagine certain matters being very much matters of confidence, and I can imagine other matters being matters for more lenient treatment of the Minister of the day. Therefore, I should not like to lay down a general rule ahead on that particular issue.
I hope that my noble Friend, my hon. Friends and those who have raised this matter and those other hon. Members including the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) and the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), who have spoken on this matter will realise that the time has not been wasted. The Opposition have tabled a Motion for consideration, which I hope may be reached shortly, which is

perfectly within their legitimate constitutional rights. I think that it is reasonable, while paying regard to everyone else's susceptibilities, that we should give time for that as soon as possible.
If there are any other points which any of my hon. Friends or any hon. Gentlemen want to raise within the legitimate span of a short period, I hope that they will do so. Otherwise, I hope that we may come to a conclusion, on the understanding that it is too late this year to reach a satisfactory conclusion on how best to consider Supply.
We are reaching the time of the Budget. There is no doubt that during the Budget those who are interested in finance will be able to make the most detailed speeches. When the Budget is over and during the rest of the Session, let us consider how better to improve the situation in the next Session. I hope that my noble Friend, will, therefore, feel that his intervention, couched in felicitous, family, baronial and altogether traditional terms, relating to the various families whose relations are here present today, thus tying the past with the present and the present with the future, has been worth his while and ours. I feel that it has been worth while and I hope that the House will accept it in that spirit.

Mr. S. O. Davies(Merthyr Tydvil): Before the right hon. Gentleman disposes of this, will he consider this aspect of the contribution he has just made? Has he not, for all practical purposes, admitted to the House this evening that the burden of work on this Chamber is far greater than it can democratically cope with? Is not the answer a large measure of devolution along the lines of self-government—I am very serious about this—to Scotland, Wales and England?

Mr. Butler: The Government are putting a Motion on the Order Paper concerning the Welsh Grand Committee. That should be a good start. The Scottish Grand Committee is already doing very useful work.

7.10 p.m.

Mr. Tom Brown: In a very few words I want to express the appreciation of several of my hon. Friends for the very sympathetic way in which the


Leader of the House has received what has been said, particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin). I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give serious attention to what my hon. Friend said. The evidence submitted by my hon. Friend of events taking place in 1960 shocked not only most hon. Members on this side, but the whole House. As the Home Secretary has told us that he will look into it, we can go on to our Motion on pensions. I pay my tribute to the Home Secretary for the sympathetic way he received what has been said already on the two points.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: In view of what my right hon. Friend has been good enough to say to the House, in view of the inquiries which he intends to make, and in view of the kindly and benevolent, if not baronial, way in which he has responded to the debate, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

Committee Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — NATIONAL INSURANCE BENEFITS

7.12 p.m.

Mr. Alfred Robens: I beg to move,
That this House is of the opinion that the increase, to £3 per week, in the basic rates of retirement and widows' pensions, sickness and unemployment benefits, which was first urged by the Labour Party in May 1957, should be put into effect immediately.
We are starting on this Motion a little later than we had originally thought. Therefore, I do not propose to make the speech I had originally intended to deliver because, in the interests of all hon. Members who wish to take part in what is a very important debate, short speeches should be the order of the day. If that course is followed, it will enable more hon. Members to participate, and I wish to set an example. Therefore, I do not propose to deal with the sickness, unemployment and widows' pensions aspects of the Motion. I hope that hon. Members will pick up those points. Indeed, we have heard a very interesting speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) on those topics. It is incumbent on me to deal with one specific topic, and I think that that might appropriately be old-age pensions, leaving the rest to be picked up as we go along, in the interests of hon. Members wanting to make speeches.
It is an interesting exercise to prepare a speech on a subject on which one does not normally speak in the House. It makes one read a great deal of what all the people have been saying for the past year or so. I have read a few hundred columns of HANSARD in the last day or so. I was very struck by the amount of time which has been spent in the House on arguing who did best for the old-age pensioners—the Labour Government or the Tory Government. The arguments can always be changed by reason of the starting point from which one begins the argument—whether one begins the argument at the 10s., which the Labour Government altered to 26s., or whether one starts the argument at the 26s., which was where the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance usually started his arguments.
The Government have tabled an Amendment
noting that national insurance benefits are in real terms substantially higher than they were at any time under any Labour Government …".
The Government are awfully modest in their claim. I do not accept the word "substantially", but, leaving that out, why did they claim only that their benefits were higher than under the Labour Government? They are higher than under any Government in this century. The Government have been very modest not to include "all previous Governments"—all previous Tory Governments, Liberal Governments, Labour Governments. National Governments, all Governments.
There must have been a good deal of pure political chicanery about the arguments as to who did best. What is important is to face facts. I want to save the Minister a fair amount of his speech by conceding right away that the amount of pension which the old-age pensioners receive today is more than they got in 1951 and that the purchasing value of the pension today is greater than it was in 1951. That should save the right hon. Gentleman at least twenty minutes of his speech, if one can judge from what has taken place in the House in debates on this subject.
The strange thing is, when looking at the actual figures, that the Labour Government in six years advanced the old-age pension by 20s. and the Conservative Government in nine years have advanced the old-age pension by exactly the same amount, namely, 20s.
The circumstances have been a little different. The immediate post-war years can hardly be compared with the years from 1951 to 1960. I remember the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) making some very memorable speeches, particularly one in which he said that at the end of the war this country would be bankrupt and there would not be money for anything. Looking at this impartially, the efforts of those six years under the Labour Government were slightly better than the efforts made in the following nine years by a Tory Government, although it is still true that the total amount that the pensioner has and its purchasing value is greater than it was in 1951.
By how much is it greater? In nine years we have increased the purchasing power of the old-age pensioner's pension by 5s. 9d. a week. In view of all that has taken place and the increased prosperity of this nation, along with all other Western European countries, it is an absolute disgrace to crow or to suggest that there has been a real improvement in pensions when the improvement is only 5s. 9d. a week.
It is important, therefore, that we should see how other people have fared. The latest figures I have of weekly earnings—the right hon. Gentleman may have later figures—are those for October, 1959. It looks as though the average weekly earnings rose from £7 1s. 1d. a week in October, 1951, to £11 8s. 6d. a week in October, 1959. If we want to bring that back to purchasing value, as I have brought the figures back for the pensions, it means that the real purchasing value increase in earnings from October, 1951, to October, 1959, has been 39s. 6d. a week. That figure must always be compared with the original figure 1 mentioned in relation to old-age pensions, namely, 5s. 9d. Therefore, the weekly wage earner has managed to get an improvement of 39s. 6d. in his standard of living.
I was surprised when I looked at the figures, which are quite old, of people who are on £1,000 a year. One gets a figure that is about twelve months old in relation to the income groups. The figure at this moment must be considerably higher than the one I am about to give. In the last two years the number of people earning £1,000 a year or more has increased by 460,000. Today, one earner in twelve earns over £1,000 a year.
I mention those two relative figures only because it is important now to bring the Government to the specific promises they made. I have shown that the average standard of living both of the salaried man and of the weekly wage earner has risen very considerably in the past nine years, and that the old-age pensioner has had to be content with this very modest increase of 5s. 9d. We are now entitled to relate that fact to the promises given by the Government, because it is very germane.
In the debate in this House in which the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster took part, a good deal of time


was spent by him on orchestras and such things—which must have been highly amusing at the time, although I did not hear it—

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): A jolly good speech.

Mr. Robens: This is what he managed to convince the House, on a Division, was the right approach to the old-age pensioner. He said that we had to accept
… the assurances of Her Majesty's Government's present advisers that they will continue to maintain and improve these benefits to the fullest extent consistent with fairness to all sections of the community. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th April, 1959; Vol. 604, c. 45.]
So far, therefore, the Government have not taken the view that it would be fair to the rest of the community, whose earnings I have just indicated, to raise the old-age pension by a few extra shillings.
We move into the General Election period. What did the right hon. Gentleman the Minister say then? He said:
In our Manifesto we pledge ourselves to ensure that pensioners continue to share in the good things which a steadily expanding economy will bring.
Five and ninepence a week!
It means that we are determined that, as the national wealth and so the standard of living of our people as a whole rises, a share of that goes to the pensioner, including of course existing pensioners.
One specific question to which I shall want an answer is: when?
The right hon. Gentleman was joined by other leading members of his party. In a broadcast, the Leader of the House said:
Well, we give an undertaking to the old-age pensioners that not only will we maintain their rate of pension in relation to the cost of living which we have done up to date, and more, going by the figures. But we also say that you will take your share of the rising prosperity of the country …
I still ask: when?
Then, we have the Chancellor of the Exchequer saying:
… we intend to ensure that as our prosperity increases pensioners and others will continue to have a share.
Finally, the Prime Minister says:
As the government's programme unfolds … we shall fully live up to our fine record of achievement in the service of our older fellow countrymen.

The fine record of achievement is an increase of 5s. 9d. a week in nine years of Tory administration.
We want to know what the Government's policy is. It is quite clear to us, at least, that their policy is not now to go on increasing the old-age pension as a whole, but rather to devote some money to public assistance rates in order to relieve some of the poorest of the community. As a result, they have thrown overboard completely the whole conception and principle of the Beveridge Report, which was that of a pension that was adequate without having recourse to a means test of any kind.
We want to know whether that is their intention. Is it their intention merely to relieve real hardship where it exists, leaving the pension where it is; or do they propose to continue the policy which, in Coalition, they apparently accepted, the aim of which was to provide a pension that was in itself sufficient without recourse, other than in very exceptional circumstances, to public assistance? These are the questions that we require answering, rather than being given more statistics about who did best —a Labour Government or a Tory Government.
There are 5½ million old-age pensioners, of whom 1,134,000 are on National Assistance. That figure of 1,134,000 should not be taken as representing the only ones in that sort of need, because not only have we an idea as a result of surveys that there are a further 400,000 or even 500,000 people who are entitled to assistance but are a little too proud to ask for it, but I must remind the right hon. Gentleman that about 3 million of the 5½ million old-age pensioners are over 70 years of age. They are the Victorians. They grew up in the days when wages were low and there was not the opportunity for saving.
They are a genteel type of folk, and many of them are living at this moment in their genteel poverty behind the old aspidistra plant. They will not go for public assistance. Some are widows on very small pensions from the railways of those days. The hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) asked only the other day what the Government intended to do for railway superannui-tants, because she knows, as we all do,


that people whose pensions were based on a retirement of some fifteen years ago have very little indeed.
Those pensions have been overtaken by the rapid rise in the cost of living after the war. Today, they are pittances. A good many of these people who are not within the ranks of the 1,134,000 but are in the ranks of the 5½ million are people with small pensions whom public assistance would not reach or, if it did reach them, it would be to the extent of only a shilling or two, and they will not resort to public assistance for a matter of shillings.
These people are living pretty hard. It is of them that we are talking. They are not sharing in the increased prosperity that we have been enjoying, and the Government pledges, which were so specific and so clear, have so far not been borne out in fact. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will tell us tonight that at least the promises he made as an individual are to be fulfilled, or alternatively, that he will take the honourable way out.
How do they live, these people of whom we are talking—the Victorians, the genteel folk, those finding it hard? Every social survey shows and every social worker to whom I have talked says that it is as clear as the nose on one's face that the present pension is completely inadequate. They say that National Assistance means frugal living to such an extent as to be even degrading.
It is true, of course, that absolute poverty has gone in this country. The Labour Government made sure of that when they abolished the Poor Law. Absolute poverty has gone, but relative poverty remains, and it remains in an area of loneliness. It exists among men and women who live surrounded by every aspect of affluence and prosperity. This is the loneliest sort of life which people at that age can possibly live. They see all around them signs of the affluence of others. They look in shop windows and see television sets and all the things which can never be theirs; they were not born in the era which presented these things to the world. Their loneliness is matched only by the way they try to keep up appearances.
I have myself been shocked, after being forced by circumstances, which I do not welcome' to take the initiative in this debate and to face the work which I have

done during the last few days, by finding out how old people today are living. This morning I went down to the village near where I live and called at the local cooperative shops. I spoke to the managers of the grocery, butchery and greengrocery departments and asked them what old-age pensioners buy when they come to their shops. Time is short and I will not weary the House with individual budgets—there is no need to do that—but I will tell the House of a few extracts I took from some of the pathetic orders which I was able to see in the order books. One old-age pensioner regularly had half a pound of rashers of bacon every week, but it was collar bacon, the cheapest, at 3s. 3d. a lb.—bacon which in our house we would not eat.
I went to the butchery and asked the same question. The manager told me that old-age pensioners buy sausages or sheep's liver but they never buy a joint and they never have any fillet steak. Does anyone in the House really feel very comfortable at the thought that when any one of us goes to the Strangers' Dining Room and takes a guest the bill for the two of us for one meal comes to more than the total grocery bill at the "co-op" shop of a woman on an old-age pension? Surely, that shocks the right hon. Gentleman as it shocks me—or am I too sensitive? I think it is terrible and immoral that, in the very affluent Britain of today, there should be these people, few, it is true, compared with the size of the population, driven to eating sausages and the cheapest cuts of bacon. If any hon. Member wants the truth about how old-age pensioners fare, let him go to the grocer or the butcher and ask. He will be told what I was told this morning.
Our Motion is really far too modest in its aim. We call for 10s. a week. Our idea was £3 a week in 1957, and we ought to be demanding a lot more than 10s. now. But we asked for 10s. because we thought, "Good heavens, if we can get 10s. now, it will be something", and this is the appropriate time to make the appeal because, presumably, it will have to be dealt with in a Budget. That is why we have not put the figure at a level which today would be consistent with our declaration in 1957 which called for £3 a week.
I say again to the right hon. Gentleman, "Never mind the medals for who


has done the most". That is not important. I keep coming back to that, and the right hon. Gentleman will hear that I have a lot more to say about it. It is a damned shame that we should concern ourselves for five minutes in this House about who did the most when poverty needs to be relieved now. Old-age pensioners are not interested in our wonderful dialectical arguments across the Table. They are interested in living decently. I say again that I am not interested in who gets the medals or who did what. We are a long way from a General Election. We do not have to go round asking for old people's votes and being politicians. Let us be statesmen and humanists in the House and think of the problem as one which must be solved now.
I put these specific questions to the right hon. Gentleman, and I hope he will answer them. Do the Government accept the Beveridge principle that adequate pensions should be provided? Do the Government still accept as an objective adequate pensions without a means test? How far has the old-age pensioner to fall behind the rest of the community before the Government are prepared to do something about an increase in the pension? In Western Germany, in January, pension rates were raised by about 6 per cent. In Western Germany today, the old-age pension varies from £3 2s. 6d. to £5 a week. Yet we won the war.
On no subject about which I have had the pleasure and privilege to speak in the House of Commons have I felt as moved as I have on this, after my close contact with old-age pensioners and the disgraceful and shocking way in which the country is treating them. This is a country which can spend £200 million on Blue Streak which, as is no secret, is to be abandoned. This is a country which can produce wonderful scientists so that at Joddrell Bank we have a radio telescope the like of which is not to be seen anywhere in the world. This is a country which, through the capacity of British genius, can harness rivers, make roads and bridges and do all the wonderful things in this country and throughout the world of which we are so proud. But, my Goodness, to leave our pensioners with their present pensions is a crying

scandal and a disgrace which I invite the right hon. Gentleman to remedy tonight.

7.38 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Patricia Hornsby-Smith): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
noting that National Insurance benefits are in real terms substantially higher than they were at any time under any Labour Government, and having regard to the steadiness of prices, and the improvements made by Her Majesty's Government in the social service benefits, expresses its confidence that Her Majesty's Government will cottinue to give to the pensioner a share in the increasing prosperity which wise economic policies will continue to bring about".
It is not without significance that this debate is taking place on the eve of poll of two by-elections. There are two excellent reasons for that.

Dr. Horace King: That is a low one.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: After the protests of the right hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) that the Opposition were not interested in elections, it is worth remembering that this date was chosen by them, not by us, and I really do not think that hon. Members can complain at a fair comment.
The Opposition have frequently raised the subject of pensions on the eve of elections. Moreover, one must admit that they are faced with the dilemma of finding a topic upon which all their Members can agree. We welcome this debate. We know, as the right hon. Member himself fairly conceded, that pensions are higher than they have ever been before. In his comparisons, however, the right hon. Gentleman suffered a peculiar amnesia in comparing the very highest level which the value of the Labour Government's pensions reached in 1946—

Mr. Robens: No.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The level of pension operative under the right hon. Gentleman's Government, when they went out of office, is 10s. 9d. less in real value than the present level. The difference in real value between the present pension and the 26s. pension of 1946—


that was the highest level in real terms under the right hon. Gentleman's Government—is 6s. 2d.

Mr. Robens: That is not strictly accurate, and I am sure the right hon. Lady does not want to mislead the House. I certainly did not attempt to mislead the House, nor did I take the figure that she assumed I would take which she has written in her brief and now finds difficulty in getting away from. I said that in October, 1951, the pension was 30s. and its purchasing value was 23s. 3d. and that in March, 1960, the pension was 50s. and its purchasing value was 29s. The difference, therefore, is 5s. 9d.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: I do not want to enter into a long argument with the right hon. Gentleman, but he has repeatedly been given these figures in answer to Questions in the House. I have here a full table of the figures. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the difference between the pension of 30s. in 1951 and the pension today is 10s. 9d.
We welcome this debate, because we believe that we have a good case, a far better one than hon. Members opposite. We stand by our pledge—here I am answering the first question which the right hon. Gentleman put to me—that pensioners shall continue to share in the good things which a steadily expanding economy will bring. We have done that during the last eight years in office, and we shall continue to do it under this Administration.
Today's debate really boils down to a contest between pledges given by hon. Members opposite and the performance of hon. Members on this side of the House. The Opposition's Motion deals solely with paying out. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned not one word from start to finish of his speech about where the £200 million is to come from or how he proposes to raise it. It is important that we should bear in mind that this House has not only to give out money but has a responsibility to those who cannot be the beneficiaries but who must make the contributions to pay for it.
The right hon. Gentleman has painted a Dickensian picture of what he claims is the plight of retirement pensioners and other beneficiaries today. Like him,

I am cutting out a good deal of my speech because I know that we have only a short time and that other hon. Members wish to speak. I welcome the fact that the right hon. Gentleman dealt with pensioners, and I shall do the same.
It is difficult to reconcile the passionate expressions of hon. Members opposite out of office with their performance in office. Hon. Members opposite should be justifiably sensitive about their record, since for five long weary years the cost of living soared and the pension got lower and lower in value. Over the years, the Government have demonstrated in cash, not words, that we recognise the need of retirement pensioners and other beneficiaries. We have three times increased the value of pension, not only to meet the increase in retail prices; we have gone further than would have been necessary if the pension were tied to the cost-of-living index, which is the recommendation put forward from time to time by hon. Members opposite. The increases made by my right hon. Friend have more than met what would have been necessary to tie the pension to the cost-of-living index.
I repeat that today the 50s. pension is worth 10s. 9d. more in purchasing value than the 30s. basic pension rate of 1951.

Mr. R. H. S. Crossman: I am sure that the right hon. Lady does not want to mislead the House. The proposal from this side was not that the pension should be tied to the cost-of-living index but to a special index of the costs of the old-age pensioners. It is quite misleading to say that we suggested that it should be tied to the normal cost-of-living index.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that there is very little difference between the figures. It would still leave the rates under this Government higher than any possible rate under either index.
As I have said, the highest value of pension reached under the Labour Government was 26s.—which would now be worth 43s. 10d.—in 1946. I will spare the right hon. Gentleman the classic and very frank quotation of his right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), but I must say something about him.

Mr. Crossman: Not right hon.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman interposed to say that, and I hope that he will be able to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, lest it be thought that, like some of his colleagues, I was subjecting him to angry silence.
Whatever measure one uses to compare this Government's record—whether it is a comparison of the rate at which pensions have gone up compared with wages or any other comparison—our record is very high compared with that of hon. Members opposite. What is still more important to the beneficiaries and indeed everyone in the country is the Government's policy in stabilising prices. We have held prices steady for two years, which is of the greatest importance not only to pensioners but to people on small fixed incomes and people with modest earnings—in fact, to everyone in the country. The holding of the value of money is of prime importance to pensioners.
No one has a more important stake in our economic expansion and solvency than the retirement pensioner. But we have to earn our keep before we can spend it, and that is what we are doing at this moment. We would rather pay a pension which held its value than bounce it up and see it year after year go down in value, as it did under the policy of hon. Members opposite. Stable prices and national solvency are of first importance before one can safely increase pensions. We have no evidence that Socialism and stable prices or, indeed, national solvency have proved to be synonymous terms.
This brings me to the question which the right hon. Gentleman deliberately avoided, namely, what his proposal would cost and how the money would be provided.

Mr. Robens: As the matter was fully dealt with in the April debate, I did not think that the House would want to go through the record again. The right hon. Lady is making us hear it all over again. Let us deal with the problem of the pensioner.

Miss Homsby-Smith: We have been spending a great deal of time today discussing the expenditure of public money without proper debate. The right hon. Gentleman has given us a classic example.
I confess that, expressed as a single item, 10s. does not sound much, but when it is multiplied by over 5 million people and by 52 weeks in the year it amounts to a vast sum which has to be found either by increased contributions or higher taxation. An increase of 10s. in the 50s. rate, with corresponding increases in Industrial Injuries benefits but excluding pensions and allowances paid for uninsured wives, would cost about £165 million. As I read the Motion—the right hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong—no increase for wives on their husband's insurance is recommended. The pensions of the poor wives are to remain at 30s.
As the right hon. Gentleman wishes to be so generous, I cannot understand why the wives should not have their share. If there were a proportionate increase for wives, the bill would be about £200 million a year.
If that £200 million is to be met from National Insurance contributions, that means an extra 2s. from both employees and employers. That will raise the weekly contribution of an adult male from 9s. 11d. at the moment to 11s. 11d.
Here I take up the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Blyth on what he threw in as a debating point and what has been used by many advocates of increased pensions, and that is the rates operated in West Germany. The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that the contributions towards old-age pensions paid by employees under their system amount to 7 per cent. of their earnings. On our average weekly earnings of £13 total social security contributions at the West German level would mean a contribution of 29s. a week. Is the right hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that we should put up the 9s. 11d. contribution to 29s.? If we did that we could certainly raise benefits. If he is not advocating that he is still avoiding saying how the pensions are to be paid for.

Mr. George Lawson: Will the right hon. Lady tell the House how the present pensions are paid? The contributions have more than doubled since the Conservative Government came into office.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: I am not denying that. The hon. Member for Mother-well (Mr. Lawson) has missed my point.


I am not denying that the contributions have increased.

Mr. Lawson: The Government have doubled the contribution, but not the pension

Miss Hornsby-Smith: That still does not get us away from paying 29s. a week, if we pay 7 per cent.—

Mr. Raymond Gower: Is it not a fact that it is hardly surprising that this should be the case, considering the increased number of pensioners who have only contributed about 6s. out of the benefits they receive?

Mr. Crossman: Rescue her.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: On the contrary, I do not want to be rescued on that particular point. It is the right hon. Member for Blyth who is entirely avoiding saying how these payments are to be paid for. The House should be asked to consider where Members opposite propose to raise these sums. The cost cannot be met by taxation alone, and if we are to preserve the so-often proclaimed pension as a right of insurance, the pension and the benefit and the contribution must be linked; if benefits are to rise then contributions paid to meet them must rise as well. Any attempt to meet greater expenditure without putting up contributions would undermine the whole of the contributory principle to which Members from both sides have paid tribute.

Mr. Crossman: I am sure the right hon. Lady would agree that, at present, a young man is already paying 1s. 3d. a week more in contributions than is required to pay for his own pension. The Government have raised his contribution to pay for the pensions of older people. Why does she say that we should have to raise the flat-rate contribution even further? If she did that, that young man would be subsidising older people even more. It would be fairer to do it by taxation.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The hon. Member for Coventry, East has missed one point. It is hardly likely that the young man paying over the next few years, will, when he retires, draw the same pension as he is actuarially contributing to at the moment. Members opposite—and the right hon. Gentleman himself made a point of it—frequently mention the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, and claim

that the Beveridge scheme was for a pension which would be adequate. I must remind them, however, that the proposals put forward in the Beveridge Report, brought up to date in present purchasing terms, would have provided something like 38s. 6d. a week as a single basic rate and 64s. 9d. a week for the married rate, and it was not intended by the Report that that standard should be reached for twenty years. Members opposite are forgetting that delay of twenty years.
To the extent to which we have left Beveridge, the present rates are far better and more generous than those contained in his Report, and the new rates were immediately operative without the lag of twenty years which would have applied to those recommended under Beveridge.
We all tend to generalise and suggest that all old-age pensioners are necessarily poor. That was a very fair generalisation up to 1958, because of the pre-1948 earnings limitation on liability for insurance contributions, which meant that many retirement pensioners were almost necessarily of modest means, earning under £420 a year—because otherwise they could not come under compulsory contributory insurance. Since 1948 contributions have been spread over all income groups and, since late entrants became eligible for retirement pensions in 1958. more and more retirement pensioners have an occupational pension besides their old-age pension.
Each year sees a wider cross-section of the community becoming eligible for pensions. One and a quarter million people are drawing occupational pensions, in many cases in addition to the State pension, and about one-fifth of all retirement pensioners have an incremented pension through having deferred their retirement after the age of 65. Some have earnings, some have invested income. It is therefore true that we have a much wider cross-section and a different pattern of retirement pensioners than before 1958.
I now turn to the food that pensioners purchase and the extent to which they apply their pension to that very necessary item. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Blyth will no doubt have seen the national food survey in


the Monthly Digest of Statistics. The average spent weekly in 1957–58 was 25s. 6d. The average amount spent in 1958–59, after the 10s. rise in the basic rate, was 28s.—a rise of 2s. 6d. They paid 10 per cent. more money for food, but food prices had gone up by only 1½ per cent., so they got more food. A quarter of the extra pension was applied to purchasing more and more varied food.
Since this Government took office we have three times raised the pension and have seen to it that it did not lag behind increases in the cost of living. We have seen to it that pensioners, the sick and the unemployed have shared in the nation's growing prosperity.

Mr. Robens: Nonsense.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The right hon. Gentleman must know that they have substantially more than in the days when, for five long years, hon. Members opposite let that 26s. go down. We have pledged ourselves, during and since the General Election, not only to maintain the value of the present benefits but to ensure that old people receive their share of the rising prosperity of the country, which we believe can be assured only by a sound financial policy and by economic expansion, under which the standard of living of all our people can be maintained and enhanced.

Mrs. Alice Cullen: But did the Government consider the representations from the delegations of the pensioners?

Miss Hornsby-Smith: Probably more satisfactorily than was done up to 1951.
For these reasons, I ask the House to support the Amendment. At any rate, I ask my hon. Friends to support the Amendment, which is based upon performance and achievement which even the right hon. Gentleman opposite admits, and to reject the Opposition's Motion, which asks this House to pay out £200 million more money immediately, without advancing any method or a single argument about how it is proposed to pay for it.

8.0 p.m.

Mr. Tom Brown: I hope that the remainder of this debate will be dealt with in a very serious way because,

as I have said before and I repeat, the problem now before the House is. whether expressed in the Amendment or the Motion, an intensely human problem and must be dealt with on human grounds if we are to succeed in achieving what we set out to do.
There was a very important week last month in the lives of pensioners. Every week in the month is important to them, but during February there were three very important days in the lives of the old-age pensioners, the sick and the disabled, the unemployed and those who are suffering from industrial injuries. Those three days were 9th, 10th and 12th February. On 9th February, as the Minister and the right hon. Lady— who was somewhat erroneous in her treatment of the problem—will remember, they met a deputation from the Old-Age Pensioners' Association. That deputation consisted of people who came from as fax afield as Aberdeen, Newport, Cardiff, Liverpool and Merseyside. Why did they come? They came because they felt aggrieved at the inaction of the Government in not meeting the promises which the Government had made to them during the General Election.

Mr. Gower: rose—

Mr. Brown: I cannot give way because my time is limited, as is that of all other hon. Members, and I do not want to stop somebody else having an opportunity to take part in the debate.
They explained to the Minister and to representatives of the Government side and of the Social Insurance Committee representing this side, the dire needs of the old-age pensioners of this country. They did not come for the sake of paying a visit or for the sake of a joy-ride. They had been sent by the Old-Age Pensioners' Association to put before the Government their grievances.
The right hon. Gentleman, I understand, was very sympathetically inclined towards them. That is the report, fair and square, made by them in the newspaper which they run. The right hon. Gentleman was very sympathetically inclined to the plea which they put forward. They had no fault to find with his reception of them. However, as I have said before, we have a saying in Lancashire that sympathy without relief


is like mustard without beef: it is very sharp. I think the right hon. Gentleman's sympathy was very sharp, because he has not given relief.
On 10th February, the day following that on which the old-age pensioners met the right hon. Gentleman, two important questions were asked in another place. Who was the gentleman who asked those two very important questions? He was the architect of the Welfare State, the noble Lord who presented the Report upon which the Welfare State has been based. He is disturbed, very much disturbed, as much as hon. Members on this side of the House are disturbed, by the dire need of the old folk. Let me just quote the questions to show what was in the noble Lord's mind and why he was so desirous of getting from the Government a statement of their intentions in dealing with the problem confronting the old people. Lord Beveridge asked the Government
whether they can say how far the increase of social security pensions in 1959 has reduced the numbers and proportions of such pensioners needing to obtain National Assistance as it was at the end of 1950.
The representative of the Government did not try to escape the responsibility. He gave a straight answer to a straight question put to him by a very important citizen of this country, the man who was charged with that responsibility twenty years ago to give us the Beveridge Report. This is what the Ear] of Dundee said:
My Lords, there were no increases in retirement pensions in 1959. They were last increased in January, 1958, when the standard rates were raised from 40s. to 50s. for a single person and from 65s. to 80s. for a married couple. Since that date, however, there have been changes in National Assistance in September, 1959, both in respect of the scale rates and the treatment of resources. The number of pensioner households receiving supplementary payments of National Assistance in December, 1959, was 976,000 compared with 677,000 in December, 1950. Expressed as a proportion of such households, the number receiving supplementary pensions is estimated at between 21½ and 22 per cent. in December, 1959, compared with 20·7 per cent. in December, 1950. The figures, however, are not comparable because, on the one hand, the real standard of National Assistance is now substantially higher and, on the other, the range of retirement pensioners is wider following the influx of 400,000 'late-age entrant' pensioners in July, 1958."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 10th February, 1960; Vol. 220, c. 1109–10.]

I have always maintained that the acid test of any pension scheme is how many people it saves from going to the National Assistance Board. That is the acid test. The more that people have to seek recourse to National Assistance for supplementation of the basic pension, the more that proves up to the hilt that the basic pension is inadequate.
What did the noble Lord do? In another question, so anxious he was—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): I hope the hon. Member will bear in mind that while it is in order to quote what is said in another place by a noble Lord speaking for the Government, it is not in order to quote what is said in the same Session by another noble Lord who is not speaking on behalf of the Government.

Mr. Brown: Very good, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I stand corrected. However, I did take the trouble to find out and make doubly sure that I would be in order in quoting what was said in questions in another place. I was told that I should be perfectly in order in quoting questions, though not in quoting speeches. Anyhow, if you rule it otherwise, I will abide by your Ruling.
But there was a noble Lord at the same time who said—he did not ask a question—to the representative of the Government in another place that these are forgotten men and women whom the Government have left high and dry on one side.
I want to speak of the pensioners. I will leave my hon. Friends to speak of the injured workmen.
I remind the Government very forcibly of what was said in the Gracious Speech from the Throne. It reads:
My Government will give close attention to the social welfare of My people, including the needs of the war-disabled and their dependants and of old people.
Those words are taken from the Gracious Speech, but the Government have not honoured their promise. They have had opportunity after opportunity, and debate after debate has taken place in this House. Private Members' Motions have been submitted, and yet no notice has been taken by the Government. No attempt has been made to honour that promise made to the old


people at the commencement of this Parliament, and that is where the Government have fallen down. These people have been waiting and wondering what was to be done to meet the dire need which they are experiencing.
The Gracious Speech also said:
The earnings rules for pensioners and widowed mothers will be further relaxed.
I give credit where it is due, and that promise has been honoured, but how many old-age pensioners have benefited? A mere handful. Our plea today is for the major portion of the old-age pensioners who are finding it extremely difficult to live.
Have the Government taken into consideration the growth of the family of old-age pensioners and the way in which it is increasing, which is a matter of very great importance? In January, 1959, there were 5,320,000 people of pensionable age in receipt of retirement pensions. In September of last year the figure had gone up to 5,429,000, and the number of people in receipt of National Assistance has gone up considerably, because, as I have said before, they have been forced by the inadequacy of the basic pension to apply for it. They are reluctantly compelled to do so, and I use the word "reluctantly" advisedly, because none of these people—and I am proud to be a member of them—goes to the National Assistance Board for the sake of going there. They are forced by economic circumstances to seek some supplementation of their pensions.
Many of us welcomed the announcement made in the Gracious Speech. I did, and I thought it was long overdue, but I. noticed that there were several hon. Members on the Government benches who also welcomed the announcement and were delighted that at long last something was to be done by the Government to relieve the poverty-stricken conditions of our old people. I noticed that the hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) in the course of his speech quoted the passage to which I have referred, but he went further than most speakers when he reminded us of the following words in the manifesto of the Conservative Party:
We pledge ourselves to ensure that pensioners will continue to share in the good things which a steady and expanding economy will bring.

He went a bit further—and I liked the distance he went on this occasion—when he said:
I think that the pensioners themselves are confident that we will do that,"—
meaning the Government. He was confident that it would be done, but the important words in that sentence were—
and we must do that."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th October, 1959; Vol. 612, c. 572.]
That is what was said by an hon. Member on the Government side of the House. I welcome the forthrightness of the hon. and gallant Member for Norwood, just as I welcome the forthrightness of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) this afternoon. My experience of dealing with the hon. and gallant Gentleman over a period of years leads me to say that he is a man of his word. He does not believe in celluloid business premises and a Jewish fire brigade. As I say, he is a man of his word, and because he is a man of his word I like him.
Before I say anything about existing pensioners, I desire to correct an inaccuracy. This is where I quarrel bitterly with the Government and the Conservative Party Central Office. They tried during the General Election to delude the electors, and particularly the old-age pensioners, when they said—and it is in their election manifesto—that they had given more to old-age pensioners than had the Labour Party. That is wrong. I have it here in black and white—

Mr. Gower: indicated dissent.

Mr. Brown: The hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) shakes his head, but I have it here in the election address of my opponent, in which he said:
We have done much more than they did— 14s. as against 20s. given by the Conservative Party.
The Government should not attempt to delude and deceive old men and women. It is morally wrong to do it when the truth is that the Conservative Party did increase the amount by 20s. and the Labour Party also increased the old-age pension by 20s. We should not allow this sort of thing to go out.
I want to deal now with the old-age pensioners and their budgets. I went to the trouble, as did my right hon. Friend


the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens), of visiting some of the old-age pensioners' homes. I live amongst them. I live in a road of terrace houses, and seven out of eight people living in that terrace are old-age pensioners. Therefore, I have seen them going to the Post Office to draw their inadequate pensions. The cost of living has been argued. It is all very well for the statisticians in the research departments of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance to tell us that the cost of living has not gone up, but the acid test in my opinion is whether the pension is adequate or inadequate, and what the pension will buy and will put into the shopping baskets of the old-age pensioners when they go to the market.
I took the trouble to find out how these people live and what they buy. Since 1958 the cost of living has risen. Rents have gone up, clothes are dearer and all these increases have militated against the old-age pensioner who finds himself or herself today having to live on 4s. 4d. a day for food alone. If the hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance or any right hon. Member or hon. Member on the Conservative benches challenges that statement, I am quite prepared to take anybody to the home where I obtained these figures. This 4s. 4d. a day is the price of a decent meal. I have not eaten because I have been sitting in the Chamber throughout the day, but I am sure that the majority of meals consumed by hon. Members in the Members' Dining Room today cost not less than 4s. 8d.
Do we expect people to live on 4s. 4d. a day? We must approach this question of trying to assist the old-age pensioner either by a direct increase in the basic pension or by a review of the pension, based on the increased cost of living. This matter has been examined by experts and by social welfare workers. They have examined the loopholes and the question whether it is within the realm of possibility for an old-age pensioner to live on a basic pension.
I should like to mention briefly some of the 21 items which I have examined. No one can challenge this, because I made the analysis myself. [Laughter.] It is no laughing matter. I am not taking what

any Tom, Dick or Harry tells me. I simply went and found out for myself. I did not get the information at second hand or third hand from somebody who had made a report. What are the articles which are brought into the domestic larder of the old-age pensioner? He consumes three loaves a week costing 2s., 31b. of potatoes costing 1s. 3d., vegetables 2s., fish 1s. 6d., ¼lb. of liver—and fancy an old-age pensioner in 1960 having to go to the butcher for a ¼lb. of liver—

Mrs. Harriet Slater: It is expensive these days.

Mr. Brown: These are shocking figures. Then there is ¼1b. of sausages at 9d., 11b. of jam 1s. 8d, ½1b. of flour 7½d., ½1b. of tea 2s. 3d., and ½1b. of lard at 9d., and so on. The total cost of all the items is £1 10s. 6d.
What about the other essentials? The old-age pensioner cannot live rent-free or light- or coal-free. He must pay for the essential commodities which bring a degree of comfort and which help him to achieve a reasonable standard of living. Again I took the trouble to check the cost of these essentials. I find that coal costs 9s. a week, gas and electricity averaged over twelve months, 4s. a week, clothes, shoes and renewals 3s. a week, cleaning materials 3s. 6d. and insurance 1s. 6d. The total of these five essentials is £1 1s., making a grand total of £2 11s. 6d. Therefore, on the fairest basis possible, the single old-age pensioner is going into the red at the rate of 1s. 6d. a week.

Mr. A. C. Manuel: The figures given by my hon. Friend are most interesting, but I know a great number of old people in Scotland and I am quite sure that none of them can exist and provide the heat which they need at a cost of one bag of coal a week. The minimum is two bags. Therefore, in the area which I represent one can easily add 9s. 4d. to that total figure.

Mr. Brown: I will concede that point straight away, because in Scotland the climatic conditions are much colder than they are in the area in which I represent.
I think that I have said sufficient to prove that the present pension of £2 10s. a week for a single pensioner—and I will not enter into the argument about


a married couple—is inadequate to live on. Whether under a Tory Government or a Labour Government, the fact remains that we have a responsibility which has been shirked in the past. We have never done what we ought to have done for these people who have made the country great with their skill and devotion and response to the call of duty in all kinds of weather. They have responded nobly to the calls made upon them. Is it too much to ask in 1960 that we should not treat our old folk, our veterans of industry, worse than old folk are treated in other countries?
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South said, we have gone through two world wars. Let us remember that the men and women for whose benefit we are appealing tonight are the mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers of the young men and women who saved the country during two world wars. I appeal to the Government to put on one side the cost of £200 million involved. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary asked where we are to find the £200 million. I say do not spend so much money on armaments. Do not spend so much money on the Blue Streak [An HON. MEMBER: "That is at an end."] This is a serious matter.
Life has always been to me a wonderful thing. It is wonderful to think that everyone on this fair earth is possessed of the radiant gift of human life with its great possibilities, its lofty ideals and noble ambitions. Every man and woman, every boy and girl, should have an opportunity to attain the highest standard of living, but they cannot enjoy this when their circumstances are governed by adverse economic conditions.

8.29 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Tiley: The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) earlier in the day, although it seems a long time ago now, said that we should have television in this Chamber. If we had, I fear that at this moment we would look a pretty drab lot.

Mr. Ellis Smith: That is what I want to show up.

Mr. Tiley: Indeed, I think we would need some of those pep preparations that are advertised on television. If we

had been on view to the millions of watchers, it would have needed a genius to explain to the old-age pensioners why we were not talking about pensions during the afternoon. Many of us have been sitting here very patiently, and it makes us impatient with each other when we think of all the speeches that will not be delivered. Many of us would wish to assure them that it was purely an act of Parliamentary justice which prevented us from debating this important topic earlier.
We welcome the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) to the Dispatch Box in a new guise. The right hon. Gentleman was firing on both barrels most of the time. Those of us who have been interested in the question of pensions for many years do not need to go out into the highways and byways to discover the problems. The fact that the right hon. Gentleman had to make inquiries here, there and everywhere showed that the position is nothing like the drab picture he painted for us.
Our pensioners are not the drab, unhappy, miserable, forgotten people the right hon. Gentleman tried to picture. The very point he made about the increasing prosperity and rising wages, happily visible throughout our economy, has helped our old people in no small way. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] I have never been one of those who believe that children do not help their parents. They do, at any rate in my part of the world, so parents have been helped considerably by the prosperity of their children.
The right hon. Gentleman also referred to a visit to the "co-op". A few weeks ago I saw a very happy announcement in the Telegraph and Argus when the City of Bradford Co-operative Wholesale Society advertised an excursion to the South Coast for all old-age pensioners, asking them to apply early because the seats were likely to be overbooked. That is a picture which one is entitled to paint in contradiction of the point made by the right hon. Gentleman.

Mrs. Slater: rose—

Mr. Tiley: I am sorry, it is very late and I cannot give way. I am not usually averse to doing so.
I am very glad to follow the hon. Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown). In


all my five years in this House, I remember only one occasion on which we have discussed pensions when he has not been here. That was a debate held about a fortnight ago. When I spoke to the hon. Gentleman a day or two later about his absence, he said it was the first debate he had missed, and that was because he had been ill. The hon. Gentleman said that this is a human problem, and so it is. The Opposition may be united on this subject—it is unusual to find them united.

Mr. Manuel: Report to Nabarro.

Mr. Tiley: Together with some of my colleagues from these benches, I saw the deputation a few days ago to which the hon. Member for Ince referred.

Mr. Manuel: The hon. Gentleman is too slick.

Mr. Tiley: I think all on the deputation were over 70 years of age. They had come from north, south, east and west, making perilous journeys, to present their case to us. But they did not come full of criticism. They were not militant. They were reasonable in their request.

Mr. T. Brown: They have been trained that way.

Mr. Tiley: More than that, they were quite amazed when, during the discussion, it was pointed out to them that of the 50s. which is being paid to a single person only 6s. has been contributed by the pensioner, and the effort being made by the wage earner is a prodigious one.
I am forced to oppose the Motion, and I must declare my interest. I always do this, traditionally. The House knows that I engage in insurance. The practical experience that I have had for about thirty years makes the Motion a revolting one to me. It is amazing to find leaders of the party opposite, who have devoted long periods of study to this question, adding their names to a Motion for the provision of increased pensions without at the same time saying how the money is to be raised to pay for them.

Mr. Ellis Smith: It will come from the Exchequer.

Mr. Tiley: I am greeted with all sorts of suggestions as to how the money shall be made available Why does not

the Motion simply state that hon. Members opposite would welcome an increase in Income Tax or an increased contribution? That would have been honest. It would be the method advocated in their National Superannuation booklet.
Hon. Members on this side of the House are pledged to award or deflect a share of our rising prosperity to pensioners. I know that we shall honour that pledge.

Mr. Manuel: When?

Mr. Tiley: We have to decide not only when, but how.

Hon. Members: When?

Lord Balniel: Behave yourselves.

Mr. Tiley: I thank my hon. Friend, but I do not need any assistance. It should be given to the pensioners. To infer that our pledge has been broken so soon after the General Election is just a political manoeuvre, which is being indulged in because some by-elections are taking place tomorrow.
Another serious omission from the Opposition Motion is any reference to increasing National Assistance scales by the same amount as that by which the pensions are to be increased. I hope that we shall never again increase pensions without adding an adequate amount to the National Assistance scale, so that those who are most in need may get their just reward.
We shall often debate this subject during the next four or five years. Hon. Members opposite need not be impatient; they will have plenty of time to make long speeches. This is our major economic problem. The difficulties of the railways or the mines are as nothing compared with those of pensions. If anybody does not believe that, let him look at the growing cost—

Mr. Robens: I do not believe it, but I know all about pension schemes.

Mr. Tiley: I shall try to convince the right hon. Gentleman. He should look at the growing cost of our pension schemes and the growing contributions which people are called upon to make. Let him consider the fact that, happily, our older people are living longer. If he wants an example of the way in which a national pensions scheme can quickly


get into a mess, let him look at the National Health Superannuation Fund, where in a few short years and involving only a comparatively few people, not the mass of the citizens of the country, a deficit of about £80 million is shown by the actuarial computation.

Mr. Manuel: That is a lot less than the cost of Blue Streak.

Mr. Tiley: The Government, in their pension legislation last year, and the Opposition, with their national superannuation scheme, established firmly and for the first time the two immense problems which the country had not fully understood before this booklet, "National Superannuation" was published. One of them was that we can receive an adequate pension at 65 only if we begin to contribute at 25 and work and save throughout the whole of our lives. This is a 40-year project. An adequate pension can be achieved only by a lifetime of work and saving. Whatever we may envisage in the future, we shall have this problem with us until the year 2,000, so that these debates are likely to go on.
There can be no doubt that the last General Election was mainly fought on this issue. In my constituency, the electors concerned themselves almost entirely with the question of pensions. I was rather proud of the importance attached to a vote which I gave in a Standing Committee when 18 hon. Members voted against a Socialist Amendment to increase the pension by 10s. Thousands of leaflets were delivered about it. I said that I was not ashamed of the vote I had given. I spoke against that Amendment because it was the same dishonest proposal as we have on the Order Paper today—paying out the money with no thought whatever to the way in which the money is to be obtained before it is paid out.
During those weeks in October people throughout the country had plenty of time to consider the whole question of pensions. They compared the record of my right hon. Friend's Ministry and the Conservative Government with what they had received when the Opposition were in power. Before coming to their decision, they compared the prospects for the future and came to the con-

clusion that the Tory faith would bring them more than the Socialist propaganda promised them.
I have told the House time and time again that pension schemes of any sort are never popular because they annoy too many people. They have to be paid for, and while we are paying for them we are slightly worse off. I wish to be completely fair to the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), whose intellectual abilities were deployed in the production of this effective booklet. Fortunately, the hon. Gentleman posed this problem on the first page. He stated the greatness of the problem:
If the old are enabled to spend more, the rest of us will have that much less to spend.

Mr. Crossman: Would the hon. Member accept one correction? That book is Labour policy, and I am not more responsible for it than any other member of the party. This is a Labour Party policy, not written by me, but written as Labour Party policy.

Mr. Tiley: I content myself by saying that the hon. Member not only shares in pronouncing this very great truth but spent a great deal of time in lectures in the country to trade unions and others trying to persuade them that this theory must be accepted. It is absolutely true, but it is unpalatable. People to not like to be told that they will have less to spend and are going to be slightly worse off, but if we do not accept that theory and do not impress it on the whole of our people, there can be no hope whatever of pensions meaning anything in the future when they have been increased, because the whole tendency will be inflationary.
The country had adequate time to consider all these points and it came to one conclusion. It knew that this Government were treating everyone fairly, not generously, for no Government have ever yet been able to treat our old people generously. That is a great pity. We are all too selfish—all of us, in all walks of life—but the country and the old folks themselves came to the conclusion that we were being fair to all those who take part in the provision of pensions. We were being fair to those who were paying the contributions, we were being fair in allocating to those who were being educated and not at work a sufficient amount of our income, and we were


being fair to those who have retired. We on these benches have been fair in the past, and we shall be fair in the future.
The problem is one which stays with us because, as the hon. Member for Coventry, East again truthfully said in a debate twelve months ago, we have a changing standard of judgment. What was acceptable to our grandparents is no longer acceptable. In my youth a youngster with a pedal-cycle among the youngsters with whom he played was a millionaire. Now a pedal-cycle is replaced by a motor-cycle. Not all the changes have been for the better. My old granny had a flat iron, a precision instrument which cost 1s. Now with these changing standards we pay £5 for something which looks like an atomic reactor and which does half the work half as well. We have all got them because we have to "Keep up with the Jones's."

Mr. J. J. Mendelson: Instead of wasting time with all these tales, for which we have not time available, will the hon. Member tell us why he is opposing the necessary increase we are demanding?

Mr. Tiley: The hon. Member should restrain himself in patience; then he will find out. The Government's problem, and our problem, was admirably summed up by the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) on 3rd November last. We all regret his continued absence from this House. The right hon. Member summed it up in these words:
There is one important problem facing representative Parliamentary government in the whole of the world where it exists. It is being asked to solve a problem which so far it has failed to solve: that is, how to reconcile Parliamentary popularity with sound economic planning….
There in a nutshell is the problem we face.
So far, nobody on either side of this House has succeeded and it is a problem which has to be solved if we are to meet the challenge that comes to us from other parts of the world."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd November, 1959; Vol. 612, c. 862.]
That sums up the issue we are discussing. I do not see around me any sign of discipline or that we are prepared to be poorer so that our old folks may be better off. We are asked to spend more on the Health Service, doctors need more pay, pension costs are going up. pressure groups are asking my right hon.

Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer for personal tax reductions, Surtax alterations are demanded, free drugs, Schedule A alterations and, from all sides, higher wages are asked for, shorter hours and longer holidays with pay. We shall not be fair to our old people if we accede to these requests, especially for personal tax reductions, before we have dealt with the problem of the old-age pensioners. I have advised the powers that be on our Front Bench that I shall not find it possible to support a Budget which gives these concessions before the problems of the old people have been adequately tackled.

Mr. Mendelson: Why did not the hon. Member say that last year?

Mr. Tiley: We all look forward to the day when disarmament will enable some hundreds of millions of pounds to be devoted to other purposes, but I hope that nobody on either side of the House will recommend that if we save £200 million or £300 million on Blue Streak we should immediately share it out, because that way lies economic ruin. Savings through disarmament must go to the production of more goods for export so that all our people may be kept fully employed and all classes may share in the result.
I shall support the Government in the Division Lobby tonight because we have been fair in the past and we shall be fair in the future, and under the Conservative faith we shall expand so that all will share in the bigger pie which there will be to divide.

8.52 p.m.

Mr. R. H. S. Crossman: The fact that I am speaking from a position in the House different from that expected a few days ago will, I hope, make only one difference to what I say: it will be shorter and it will be sharper. Indeed, I feel that I have one advantage over my right hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens). I am sure that if he had had the advantage of listening to the egregious performance of the Parliamentary Secretary he could have added even more power to his speech.
Before I deal with the Parliamentary Secretary's speech, I should like to refer to that of the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Tiley). I thank him for


exposing one of the hon. Lady's more outrageous assertions. He has stated the fact correctly. The fact is that for the last three years the Labour Party has emphasised in every statement which it has made on the subject that pensions would have to be paid for. It was not necessary for my right hon. Friend to say it today because the scheme has been laid down. As the hon. Member for Bradford, West rightly said, we incurred the danger of unpopularity by saying, day in and day out, "You cannot have pensions for nothing. Contributions must be raised". We explained precisely how it would be done.
I thought that the right hon. Lady fell somewhat below the level which she usually reaches when she failed to point out that fact and suggested that the Labour Party has not faced up to the problem of paying for pensions. In the few minutes which are available to me I will discuss precisely how we should pay for the extra pensions about which we are talking.
Before doing that, I should like to deal with two or three other points which the right hon. Lady made I was interested in her remark about stable prices. She said that prices are so stable that the pensioner has much for which he should be grateful. I know that little things may not matter, but the pension was last increased in January, 1958, and I reckon that since 1958, since the pensions were last increased, the pensioner has been welshed of 1s. 6d. a week. I know that that is not much by the right hon. Lady's standards, but under our system, with an automatic adjustment of the pension in order to cover any cost-of-living increase, that 1s. 6d. would have been paid to the pensioner. I know that it is difficult for a Tory to imagine that pensioners mind about 1s. 6d. a week, but we of the Labour Party know that this is one of the essentials and that even in a period of relatively stable prices a small increase in prices makes an enormous difference to the pensioner.
The right hon. Lady tried to persuade us that the pensioners were all right because, on the whole, they are sharing in the increased national prosperity. I must point out to her that, according to the Government, the only pensioners who are permitted to share in the increased national prosperity are those on National

Assistance, for when they increased the National Assistance scales just before the election the Government expressly stated that the increase in the National Assistance scales was justifiably higher than might have been required by the cost of living as a contribution to enabling the pensioner to share in rising national prosperity. We then put the question, "If the million pensioners in this category are allowed to share in it, why not the other 4½ million?" There was no reply.
The right hon. Lady suggested that not all pensioners are poor, because 1¼ million of them are on superannuation. She did not add that of the 1¼ million on superannuation, at least one-third are on very small amounts of superannuation. I quote the railwaymen as an example. If we include in her statistics the railwaymen who are receiving the pitiful railway superannuation, we get a false impression. In addition to the 1 million on National Assistance, in my view we have at least 2 million pensioners who are destitute or would be destitute without assistance from their sons, daughters and other relatives.
Those are the facts about sharing in rising national prosperity. If, as the Government assert, national prosperity has been increasing steadily year by year, we know for certain that the majority of pensioners have had no share in it since the last increase in the pension in January, 1958.
I come to the right hon. Lady's central challenge. She said, "All right. In principle we agree. But it would cost £200 million." The hon. Member for Bradford, West asked why National Assistance was not mentioned in the Motion. There is a simple reason. It is not within the power of this House to order the National Assistance Board to increase the rates of assistance. All that we can do is to advise and suggest it. I made no secret of the fact that when we put forward the £3 pension scheme in May, 1957, we realised that it would be a very big increase, and in my view no Government would have been justified in introducing a £3 pension and automatically increasing the National Assistance rate by £1 at the same time. It is the aim of the Labour Party to raise the pension above the National Assistance level. The increases we proposed in May, 1957, were so large


that we could have begun to raise the pension above the National Assistance level.
Three years have gone by since then. Two increases in National Assistance have been given and 10s. has been granted on National Assistance. I will be frank with the House. We calculate that it will cost £200 million now to add 10s. to the flat-rate pension, because no Government could possibly deny giving 10s. on National Assistance today. Of course we have to reckon that, in raising the basic rates today, we should have to raise not only the health, sickness and unemployment benefits but also include the full 10s. on the National Assistance rate. This merely proves that the basic pension has been kept scandalously low during that period. The hon. Member said that they should be put up both together. The Government do exactly the opposite. They put up National Assistance in September for one million people and deny the other four million.
The problem is how do we pay? The hon. Gentleman gave the case away when he said that he was giving notice to the Government that he had a pretty shrewd suspicion there would not be any tax concessions this year. Did he give notice last year when the Government had £340 million to give away? On this side of the House we said that it was wrong to give tax concessions on beer and 9d. off Income Tax before we gave the £200 million to old-age pensioners. I say this to the hon. Member on his own principle. I am glad that he has now admitted that the 10s. should have been given last year out of the tax concessions. I go forward to this year. Having failed to give it out of last year's prosperity it is our duty to give it this year, even if it would mean increasing taxation.
I make this final point about payment. I personally believe that we have to give 10s. increase to the pensioner this year whatever it costs the community. I believe that to do so we should not have to increase taxation. The Minister of Defence told us that he was putting only £87 million—a mere nothing—on defence. To give a rise to old-age pensioners would cost £100 million-and the other £100 million would be incidental. Let me say that if it means increasing taxation, I would vote for increasing taxation in order to do it. But we have

always made it clear from this side of the House that the emergency measure of increasing pensions out of taxation is a burden that we cannot place permanently on the taxpayer. That was the main reason for the whole of our superannuation scheme. It was to introduce a scheme which enabled pensioners over a period of time to get a decent pension without having an altogether different system of contributions graded according to performance. Under our scheme the £50-a-week man would at last pay his fair share.
We know full well that one cannot obtain an adequate old-age pension on a flat-rate contribution. The hon. Lady talked about having to raise the contribution. It would be an outrage to raise the flat-rate contribution in order to raise the pension today, when the Government have doubled the contribution in the last two years and simultaneously increased the burden on the insured person while reducing taxation on the wealthy. Now the Government must redress the balance by putting more on taxation while they are getting a scheme into effect.
However, we have not got a Labour Government putting into effect a decent scheme. We have a Tory Government with a crooked swindle, as we all know. I see the Minister laughing. I hope that he will not be Minister of Pensions this time next year, because when the people start paying their contributions under the scheme and begin to examine the benefits they will receive they will find that the Labour party was right in describing this as a swindle. There will be a great hubbub in this country when the people discover what they will be paying from April next year.
The real aim of this Government is permanently to prevent a decent pension. We have seen quite clearly what the Government are doing. They are doing it behind a smoke-screen. They are reintroducing a pension on a means test. The whole aim of the Government is to keep the basic rate steady and, on the one side, encourage private insurance schemes so that they can say that there are two million people in such schemes. Then they can say to those people who are not in such schemes, "If you are not in private insurance, you will have to go on to National Assistance".
I make a little prediction to the Minister. We shall see National Assistance raised once again without the basic rate rising. I shall be delighted if I am proved wrong. I shall be delighted if in the Budget there is a 10s. rise in the pension and the increase in taxation necessary to support it. I shall certainly not oppose it. I predict that the Government will, in fact, keep the basic pension down whilst raising the National Assistance level all the time in order to try to see that everyone on the State pension gets it economically on a means test and is told, "It is your fault that you are not in a private superannuation scheme."
That is what we are fighting. It can only be fought by introducing a decent superannuation scheme. That means a change of Government. That is why in the spring we shall have to make a major protest on behalf of the old people, because one thing is clear about the Amendment to our Motion. It tells us that there is to be no increase in the old-age pension. The right hon. Lady's speech would have been slightly different if she had had some hope of saying something decent to the old-age pensioners.
This is an after-General-Election year. We know quite well that the calculation of this Government is political, pure and simple. If they give an increase, they give it at the most fortunate moment. So we can expect with assurance to be told this year, in a period of ever greater affluence, "We are sorry. Inflation may come. Something will happen. We are terribly sorry for the old people". All hon. Members will remember the Prime Minister's Speech in his last television appearance the day before the General Election. He said, "Trust me, you old people. I will know the time to raise your pension". I hope that they do not trust the Tory Party at the next election.

9.4 p.m.

Mr. Raymond Gower: The hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) said that this was an after-election year. He will recall that my right hon. Friend did not attempt to bribe the old people immediately before the last election. This type of debate has a long and peculiar history. By "peculiar history" I mean that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends would

be truly astounded if my right hon. Friend now came forward and said that he accepted the Motion.

Mr. Crossman: Delighted, not astounded.

Mr. Gower: They would be astonished, because they would be able to trudge the country and tell the people that it was their initiative that secured the increase. If, on the other hand, my right hon. Friend rejects the Motion, they can trudge the country telling people that each Conservative Member who voted against their Motion was opposed to the betterment of conditions for old people. In other words, in tabling a Motion like this, they put themselves in the extremely happy position of "Heads, we win; tails, you lose".
It is very difficult for the old people to understand the tactics of this House. Even if my right hon. Friend—and I reply to the hon. Member for Coventry, East— had decided to increase these pensions next week, he would be most unlikely to do so today in response to an Opposition Motion. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] It would be the most foolish tactics. One unfortunate thing that emanates from a debate like this is that it sometimes enables the Opposition to pose as being better friends of the old people than are we on this side, and that is absolutely untrue.
The hon. Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown) painted a picture, and quite a true picture, of a deputation coming from the North to see the Minister. When he was painting that picture, I could not help wondering whether similar deputations came to see the right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) who was Minister of Pensions in the Labour Government in 1950; when she assured the country that there was no evident hardship among the old people. Did the deputations come down then? My experience in my part of the country is that some of those who have habitually protested during the lifetime of two Conservative Governments made no murmur when there was a Labour Government.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) opened this debate by saying that he did not want to compare records, and then went on very skilfully to suggest that the Labour


performance was better than ours. What was that performance? I concede that the Labour Party put up the pension to 26s. in 1946, and that it was a step forward partially to cover the erosion of the value of pensions during the war years.
But what did they do in 1947? Nothing. What did they do in 1948? Nothing. What did they do in 1949? Nothing. How much increase was there in 1950? No increase. And what increase was there in 1951? For many pensioners there was no increase at all and for the others, 4s. only. That was the magnitude of their achievement. I know several old-age pensioners in my constituency who, from 1946 until a Conservative Government took office, had no increase at all.
The position of back-benchers on this side of the House has been made quite difficult during the lifetime of two Conservative Governments, even though there have been three successive increases in the basic rate; but had the earlier position prevailed, had there been five years with no increase for a lot of pensioners, our life here would have been intolerable. When I view the Government's Amendment in the light of that performance, I have absolute confidence in the pledge given in the Government's Amendment that the old people will, in future, share in our greater and rising prosperity.
The hon. Member for Coventry, East criticised, by implication, or more expressly, the increases that have been made in the National Assistance rates. I believe that it was absolutely right that this Government should first have attended to the wants of the most needy section of the community. It was absolutely right, if we intended to give people, pensioners and others, a share in our increasing prosperity, that we should start with those retirement pensioners whose need is obviously the greatest.
The right hon. Member for Blyth suggested, as did his hon. Friend the Member for Ince, that the number of people in receipt of National Assistance was evidence of the inadequacy of the pension. Hon. Members opposite supported not merely the increase in the rates of National Assistance; they supported, and indeed, many

of them warmly advocated, the extension and improvement of the disregards system, steps which were designed deliberately to bring National Assistance into more households, including the households of retirement pensioners. It was inevitable that, when the National Assistance rates were increased and the disregards were altered so that more people qualified to receive National Assistance, the proportion and numbers of retirement pensioners receiving National Assistance would vastly increase.
We should reconsider our view about this matter. When one of my right hon. Friend's precedessors, then Mr. Peake, was Minister, it was obviously quite a good basis of judgment to consider how many old-age pensioners were receiving National Assistance, but, at that time, as indeed during most of the latter years of the Labour Government, retirement pensions were at a very low level. Now that we have put National Assistance on a much higher scale and now that the pensions themselves, as the right hon. Gentleman admitted, are on a better scale, I submit that, if we give this extra help where it is most needed, that proportion no longer provides a proper basis for judging the adequacy of the pension.
I support what has been said by several hon. Members about the excellent services rendered by the National Assistance Board. I make only one comment. In my experience, certain people quite wrongly imagine that, if they happen to own their own houses, however small, they are thereby precluded from having the benefit of National Assistance. I hope that publicity will be given to this aspect of the administration of National Assistance in order to correct that impression.
When we consider that, at this time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Tiley) pointed out, increasing demands are being made from every direction on the National Exchequer, and the same people in Opposition are pleading for more expenditure on hospitals, education and roads, we must realise that there must be more practical and accurate suggestions made as to how an increase in pension can be financed. The right hon. Member for Blyth gave the example of Western Germany. He knows very well


that in Western Germany the rate of contribution is, on average, about 25s. or 26s. a week, and it would surely not be possible to introduce such a contribution on the part of employer and employee in this country today. He must know that that sort of comparison is not very instructive in a debate of this kind.
I must keep my word and sit down at a certain time, so I will be brief. I respectfully submit that this debate is in many ways but a repetition of many we have had in the past. The Opposition are on a very happy wicket. They can go to the country and say either that they took the initiative and brought about a result or that they took the initiative and proved that the Government would not give what they asked for.
I respectfully submit that this is a field of Government administration in which performance speaks louder than words. There is much evidence that, during the last General Election campaign and at the time of the election itself, very many old people felt that our performance was better than the words we hear from the Opposition. I have every confidence in the Government. For my part, I hope that, after my right hon. Friend and the Government have considered the many claims that are made, and particularly the very deserving nature of this claim that there should be another basic increase—I agree with the hon. Member for Coventry, East that we want an increase in the basic rate—[Interruption.]—yes, I hope that, after its financing has been carefully considered and all its implications have been carefully looked at, it will be brought in as soon as means can be contrived, but not merely in response to a Motion of this kind which is obviously ill-considered, and, I believe, no more than a tactical exercise by the Opposition on the eve of two important by-elections.

9.14 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: The occasion of this debate is of no more political significance than the Prime Minister's party political broadcast. They both happen to come on the eve of the Brighouse by-election. However, having just returned from Brighouse, I can assure the right hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary and hon. Members opposite

that Yorkshire folk are not easily tippled over one way or the other at the last moment. Their minds are already made up. To know which way the majority of their minds are made up we must await the result of the poll.
I thought that the speech of the right hon. Lady was rather out of character. Why she injected so much political venom into her speech, I cannot understand. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) certainly felt and spoke passionately about the plight of a great many old-age pensioners, but I think that that was no reason why she should have thrown out such a series of unworthy comments about my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friends. Earlier this afternoon, the complaint was that the Opposition were not doing their job and that hon. Members opposite must do our job for us. Now, when we are doing our job, the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) complains that we are having a very happy time. This is no happy occasion for us. It is our duty to raise the matter of the position of National Insurance beneficiaries as frequently as seems appropriate to us.
Let me remind the House that there is an obligation upon it to deal with this very big social issue. There is no one else to do it. The old-age pensioners have no Priestley Commission, Pilkington Commission or Guillebaud Committee to advise on their claims for a bigger share of the national income. That responsibility rests on this House, and we alone can discharge it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown) said, this responsibility is not only upon the House: there is a responsibility upon the Minister also.
I should like to remand the right hon. Gentleman of certain statutory obligations which are placed upon him under Sections 39 and 40 of the National Insurance Act, 1946. He is in duty bound to present a report upon a quinquennial revalution or a quinquennial actuarial report on the state of contributions and benefits in the National Insurance Fund. The last one we had was at 31st March, 1954. I suggest that the Minister should take stock, since two years has expired since the last increase, and come to the House to tell us the prospects for the well-being of retirement pensioners in the conditions of today.
Before the House there is a choice between a Motion in the names of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and my right hon. and hon. Friends which is quite explicit and specific about what should be done and an Amendment which contains some paltry references to the Labour Party's record but nothing but vague promises about the future intentions of the Government. Some of my hon. Friends believe that a 10s. increase is not enough. I do not think it is enough either. This is the residual portion of a proposal to increase the pension to £3 a week which we made in 1957. The Government met us only half-way in the improvement they made in 1958. However, the proposal to increase the pension from 50s. to £3 a week is at least an increase of 10s., and that is better than nothing, which is what the Amendment means.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) said, the Government's Amendment means that there is to be nothing more for retirement pensioners. The speech of the right hon. Lady left no hope for any increase in the basic rate of pension. She shrank from increased contributions and she shrank from finding the cost from taxation. She poured cold water on any idea of accommodating this considerable increase in expenditure within the nation's budgetary arrangements in the near future. When will there be an increase for National Insurance beneficiaries?
There is one central issue in this debate: is the retirement pension of 50s. a week for a single person and £4 a week for a married couple enough in present circumstances? Do we have to argue that in detail, to examine the budgets of old-age pensioners, to show the manifest inadequacy of these benefits for a decent standard of life?
My right hon. Friend the Member for Blyth conceded to the right hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that in real terms the level of benefits today was higher than the purchasing power of 1946 or 1951, but in order to get that result we must examine the severity of the subsistence standard inevitably taken in 1946. If the House wishes to know what that standard was in pre-war terms, it was a total expenditure of 17s. 6d. for a single person and 29s. 6d.

for a married couple, in 1938. There are many Members who can carry their minds back to 1938. What was living like then on 17s. 6d. a week for a single person or 29s. 6d. for a married couple? Yet it is upon that foundation that the calculation is made of the higher purchasing power of the pension today in real terms compared with 1946.
As the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Tiley) says, ideas are changing, standards of judgment are changing. The standard of life in the country is improving and we want to see that retirement pensioners have their full share of it. We are tonight the custodians of the well-being of more than 6 million people who are on National Insurance benefit. More than 5 million of them are on retirement pensions, and the rest are on sickness or unemployment benefit. One-fifth of the retirement pensioners are on National Assistance. That proportion has remained fairly steady over the years. It did rise to one quarter, and it is now just over one-fifth; but there is no comfort in the fact that one-fifth of its retirement pensioners have to go to the National Assistance Board for supplementation.
I do not think there is any real disagreement in the House tonight that these benefits are too low. They are too low. What then is to be done about it? One thing we have not got is a definition of the criteria we shall take in judging whether an increase is necessary. The right hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has given us information about the proportion of pensioners who have vocational pension benefits of one kind or another. She referred to the National Food Survey. It would be interesting if we could arrange for an exhibition in this House of what the diet and the clothing purchases of old-age pensioners would look like when taken over a period of, say, four weeks or even six months.
What sort of standards are these pensioners living at? Behind many tidy windows, clean steps and window-sills in the industrial parts of the country there exist old-age pensioners living lonely, drab and unhappy lives. They do not go out on coach tours. They may be taken by the generosity of others who sympathise with their position. The hon. Member for Bradford, West was in error


in suggesting that the old-age pensioners indulge in high jinks and gallivant about the country in coaches. Many people subscribe large sums of money to enable old-age pensioners to get a little enjoyment, a little relaxation and change from the drabness of their lives.

Mr. Tiley: The hon. Gentleman is being a little rude to the statement I made. I said I was happy to notice that this relaxation was coming to our old-age pensioners. I considered that it was fair to say this to offset the drab picture painted by the right hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens).

Mr. Houghton: I thought the suggestion underlying what the hon. Member said was that old-age pensioners had now enough money to be able to afford to make these trips. I categorically deny that that is so. There are friends of old folk and of old-age pensions associations who make subscriptions and give bountiful help and generous assistance so that pensioners shall have some enjoyment.
All that we hear from the benches opposite is that the old-age pensioners shall have some share in the increasing prosperity. What is the basis upon which this increasing share will be given? We have tried time and again to get from the Minister some criteria by reference to which pensioners can judge their position in relation to changing economic and social conditions, but he has declined to define his position: he says that it must be a matter for the judgment of the Government having regard to the whole situation. I suggest that that is not good enough.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) asked three questions, but he did not get an answer to any of them. We have asked those and similar questions repeatedly in the past. Ministers themselves occasionally have asked rhetorical questions, about whether we should provide a pension high enough for subsistence or whether we should tolerate National Assistance playing a bigger part. They have failed to answer their own questions and now they have given up asking them.
The hon. Member for Bradford, West need not fear that an increase given to the pensioners will be inflationary. They are not the people who are putting pres-

sure behind hire-purchase transactions for motor cars, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and the rest. They are not people who are pressing in their demands for consumer durables. Their needs are quite basic, food and clothing, and they get very little margin for either.

Colonel Sir Malcolm Stoddart-Scott: And fuel.

Mr. Houghton: There is also the question of the cost of this proposal. Of course, it will cost money. Of course, it will cost, let us admit, about £200 million. It is, perhaps, too late to lament the action of the Government this year in reducing taxation by no less than £360 million without apparently giving consideration to the position of the retirement pensioners.
Another thing which we ought to bear in mind in this connection is the fantastic gerrymandering and jiggery-pokery which has been going on over recent years with the finances of the National Insurance scheme. I suppose the Minister would think that I had taken leave of my senses if I were to say that there is a reserve fund of £1,160 million and £352 million in the National Insurance Fund from surpluses built up over the years when contributions were in excess of requirements, but the money having been invested with the Government, it is a phan-tom fund at present. It cannot be drawn upon without the Government having to fill the gap in gilt-edged or nationalised industry investments by more taxation or by borrowing. So this enormous reserve fund is a complete myth from the point of view of practical assistance at the present time. So we are having to run our fund on a pay-as-you-go system notwithstanding these enormous surpluses which have been built up over the previous years.
But there is more to it than that—much more. I ask the House just to take account of the successive measures which the Government have taken to shift the burden previously accepted by the State from the Exchequer to the contributors. First of all—and this is the Government's recipe for a sound social policy—by keeping down the cost of National Insurance by keeping benefits below the National Assistance level and relying on personal savings, vocational pensions, a higher earnings


limit, bigger increments, and National Assistance to take care of hardship. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East is quite right. This is a device to avoid raising the basic rate of benefit.
Then, there is another move in this operation. Shift from taxation some of the liabilities put upon it by earlier legislation and transfer them to the contributors; that is, replace progressive taxation by poll taxation, so that the employed man is made to pay for his pension 39 per cent. more than is actuarially required.
Then, third, and for good measure, put a limit on the Exchequer contribution, even lower in actual amount than was foreseen and accepted when the scheme began.
Finally, mix these ingredients into a graduated pensions scheme until the employed person getting over £9 a week will pay a contribution of which only 42 per cent. is needed to be paid actuarially for the higher benefit, the remaining 58 per cent. going to reduce the Exchequer liability to its former commitment. That is the Government's recipe for progressive social legislation. Then, when they have mixed it all up, they pour tendentious treacle over the lot and call it "increased prosperity pudding" That is the dish which the Government are presenting to the retirement pensioners and National Insurance beneficiaries in the country today.
If we are to talk about costs, is the House to say that retirement pensioners and other National Insurance beneficiaries are expendable in the name of economy? Is it to say that the rise in the Estimates this year of over £340 million can be allowed to pass on every other object except this? That is what the Government are saying. We say that this is a great moral obligation. This is the social purpose to which Parliament and the country put its hand in 1946 and must be pursued courageously, and accommodation must be found for it within the national resources. No one will pretend that the national resources today cannot hold an increased cost for retirement pensioners. Of course, they can. One way of enabling them to accommodate this cost would be by restoring, and no more than restoring, the Exchequer liabilities to what they were previously. That is all that needs to be

done. That could be continued until the new scheme can take care of the higher cost of the standard level of benefits.
The country is certainly not likely to be happy to see the existing benefits stay where they are. The Government are trying to lull the nation's social conscience to sleep. It is being obscured by the glitter and glossy "admass" that is being put across at the present time. Our duty as an Opposition is to keep the nation's social conscience alive, and that is the purpose of this debate. If nothing comes of it, we shall return to the charge in due course, because it is the duty of the Opposition, and as we feel passionately about it we shall go on doing it.

9.34 p.m.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): I have listened to the whole of this somewhat abbreviated debate, and I think that the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) will agree with me at least in saying that the changes in what we might describe as the normal caste of these debates, some of which have arisen in circumstances which I will not be so indelicate as to intrude upon, have very much improved the standard of our debate.
The right hon. Member for Blyth (Mr Robens) seemed a little irritated with my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary when she made the suggestion that the timing of this debate had been arranged not wholly in ignorance of the fact that Brighouse and Spenborough polls tomorrow. I am bound to say that the right hon. Gentleman is not so naive as to suggest that that idea was wholly out of the minds of his right hon. Friends. I make no complaint about it, because this particular line is the line which right hon. Gentlemen opposite have pursued for the last three or four years with a consistent lack of success, and it is a little unrealistic for the right hon. Gentleman to get so excited when my right hon. Friend drew attention to so evident a fact.
The Motion itself is curious and here I cannot congratulate the right hon. Member on its being any improvement at all on its predecessors. Firstly, it refers, as the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) said, to the May, 1957, proposal. It refers also to £3 a week. I


assume therefore that it follows the May, 1957, proposal in providing 10s. for a single person and 10s. for a married couple.
I do not believe that any serious student of social affairs will really argue that if one is supporting on grounds of hardship, as hon. Members have done during the debate, a proposal for an increase in pensions, it is a serious proposal to propose to give no more to two people than to one. I am afraid therefore that it leaves the impression that this 10s. is put in the Motion because it looks attractive here and elsewhere; but it is not and cannot be intended to be a serious proposal, still less a proposal based upon an idea that it will remedy hardship.
Then the Motion, like a certain notorious surgeon, is more notable for what it leaves out than for what it leaves in. It says nothing at all about any proposal to touch war pensions. There is not a word about Industrial Injuries either. There is not a word about National Assistance, and not a word therefore about trying to help the very poorest section of the community, about whom hon. and right hon. Members opposite were so very eloquent earlier today. The hon. Member for Coventry, East was conscious of that lapse when he said, "We did not put it in because the House cannot initiate changes. They lie with the National Assistance Board."
I do not think that that is the hon. Member's best argument. It does not stand up when I invite his attention and that of the House to the fact that hon. and right hon. Members opposite, including himself, had no such feelings for constitutional niceties when they tabled the Motion of 20th April, 1959, which referred explicitly to a proposal to increase National Assistance scales, nor for that matter when they tabled their Motion of 1st August, 1957. But I must deal with the Motion—and I accept the invitation—in the terms in which it has been put down, and that is that it is a proposal to increase the particular benefits referred to in it, and no others. Indeed, it would not be fair to the House to discuss the Motion on any other basis.
My right hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, in her most admirable

speech, very rightly drew attention to the fact that there is not a word in the Motion, nor was there a word in the speech of the right hon. Member for Blyth, on how this proposal was to be paid for. If we are not to be told— and not only are there no proposals in the Motion as to how these things are to be paid for but there are other highly expensive things not even in the Motion which right hon. Members opposite are urging but forgot to include—I say to the right hon. Member for Blyth that he is dealing with this matter in a wholly irresponsible manner.
The hon. Member for Coventry, East, as he always is, was perfectly frank and he threw a perfectly clear light on what his views are. The House respects him for that. He said frankly, "We will put the lot on taxation". Is that the proposal of the right hon. Member for Blyth or the hon. Member for Sowerby? Apparently not. I see that there is another disagreement.
The House, and the country outside, will look at this proposal even more sceptically when we are told that various things are advocated which were not put in the Motion, and for the most unsubstantial reasons, and when there is nothing in the Motion about how the proposed increase is to be paid for. Apparently there is some doubt. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sowerby will enlighten us on how it is to be paid for?

Mr. Houghton: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Is he aware that under the National Insurance Act passed last year the Exchequer contribution for 1968 will be actually less in money terms than that accepted and forecast under the 1946 Act? Under those conditions, what is the good of raising the question of whether this is on taxation or not? The Exchequer has repudiated—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] —I would be in favour of the Exchequer assuming a responsibility now at least equal to that which it accepted in 1946.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Then that rather long intervention means as a matter of simple mathematics that the hon. Gentleman does not agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East that the whole £200 million involved in this proposal should be put upon the Exchequer. That is clear.
Therefore we come back to the point that this proposal apparently does not contain all that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite want. It not only does not contain any indication of how it is to be paid for, but there is disagreement between the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Coventry, East. I think we can leave that matter there. The country will judge, and judge clearly, of the seriousness or otherwise with which this proposal is commended to it at this particular moment.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Blyth exhibited extraordinary hyper-sensitivity to the possibility that his own party's record in these matters might be referred to. I think the right hon. Gentleman did not appreciate the relevance of those references. If one is, as the right hon. Gentleman is doing, alleging in the most vigorous language that the Government of the day are maltreating and ill-treating the retirement pensioner, it is surely a relevant method of testing either the accuracy or the sincerity of that charge to point out that the Government to which the right hon. Gentleman belonged treated those very same pensioners considerably less well.
Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that? And is that not also relevant to allegations as to the future intentions of the Government and also, for example, to the most entertaining little intellectual cocktail which the hon. Member for Sowerby shook so vigorously at the Box a few minutes ago? As to what the intentions of the Government may be, it is surely relevant that we are talking about the intentions and policy of a Government which, to whatever extent one may criticise its handling of this matter, is one which has at least done better in this respect than those who seek to criticise it.
The right hon. Gentleman got into a little tangle upon this comparison. I do not blame him because he comes new to these debates. He does not appear to appreciate that apart from the figures —which he will allow me to correct in a moment—there is a clear contrast between the records of the two Governments in this respect. His Government reached their highest level for the pension in 1946 and allowed it to be eroded

year by year; even, indeed, when they increased the pension for some, but not for all, pensioners, they did not raise it sufficiently at that moment to restore even the 1946 value.
Under this Government, however, we have had increases which have steadily raised the pension to new high levels. It is not a simple exercise of comparing the high points of one Government with those of another; it is a question of noting the tendencies, and the fact that under the Administration of right hon. Gentlemen opposite the pension decreased in purchasing power. It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to make these violent criticisms, speaking in most moving terms of what his grocer told him this morning and then conveniently forgetting that his own Government never succeeded in restoring the pension to the 1946 level.
Now let me correct the right hon. Gentleman's figure. The real value of the pension today—

Mr. Lawson: rose—

Hon. Members: Sit down.

Mr. Speaker: If the Minister does not give way, the hon. Member is out of order in persisting in his effort to speak.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: For the same reason as the hon. Member for Coventry, East did not give way—

Mr. Lawson: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have reminded the hon. Member of his obligations. I hope that he will not forget them.

Mr. Lawson: On a point of order. The right hon. Gentleman has been making definite assertions regarding the policy of his Government, which, according to my information, are not true.

Mr. Speaker: I hope that the hon. Member will not raise as a point of order that which he does not believe to be one.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I must come back to the right hon. Gentleman's figure, from which I am not to be diverted. He challenged by hon. Friend and said that under nine years of Conservative Government the pension had risen by 5s. 9d.

Mr. Robens: In terms of purchasing power.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In terms of purchasing power. Let us get the figures quite clear. In 1951 the single rate of pension for those who had benefited from the change was 30s. a week. I am giving the right hon. Gentleman the advantage of the more favourable example; he will remember that some pensions remained at 26s. a week, but I will give him his 30s. a week. The purchasing power of that sum, at 1960 prices, would be 39s. 3d. Since the current rate is 50s., it is clear that there has been an increase in the real value of the pension, under Conservative Governments, not of 5s. 9d. but of 10s. 9d. My right hon. Friend was right. That is the true measure of what has been done.

Mr. Lawson: rose—

Hon. Members: Sit down.

Mr. Speaker: This is tedious. Did not Leonardo say:
Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge"?

Mr. Lawson: Hon. Members opposite took up three or four hours of this debate, probably with the deliberate purpose of not permitting many hon. Members on this side to discuss this question. We are now left with no time on our hands, and the right hon. Gentleman now makes some very inaccurate statements.

Mr. Speaker: Nothing happened that was out of order today, that I know of. I am afraid that the hon. Member must resume his seat unless the Minister wishes to give way.

Mr. Lawson: Further to that point of order. Would it be in order for us to continue the debate for another hour, so that we may get this matter fully discussed?

Mr. Speaker: I have no power so to continue it.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The House knows well—[HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."] It is my duty to answer the speeches that have already been made in a time that is becoming more limited already as a result of the intervention of the hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson). I cannot spare him any of the time which is left, and I am going to give the answers to the House and to the right hon. Member for Blyth.
Let me remind the House that this case of the retirement pension, which is not the only benefit mentioned in the Motion, is the one least favourable to us. On the other benefits the case is stronger. The widow's pension today in real terms, in terms of what it will buy, is 16s. or 47 per cent. better than it was left by right hon. Gentlemen opposite in 1951. In the case of the widowed mother with three children the pension was 55s. in 1951; it is 112s. today, an increase in real terms of 40s.
Take the sick or the unemployed to whom the right hon. Gentleman referred. There is an increase for a man with a wife and three children in real terms of 39s. 4d. or 45 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman may appreciate when he makes the sort of attack he has made today that though we differ—as of course we do because it is the essence of Parliamentary and public life—as to what is precisely the right level, it obscures counsel and does not help his own case to underrate the solid and real improvements, or, if I may put it in this way, the share of increasing prosperity which has already been given by the Government.
Let us take the point made by the right hon. Gentleman about the numbers receiving supplementation from the National Assistance Board. The latest figure which I can give the House is 21·8 per cent. of retirement pensioners as at December. I tell the House frankly that this is an increase above the level of 20·4 per cent. in the previous December. It is still less, let me remind the House—and perhaps the hon. Member for Sowerby will not nod quite so vigorously—than the 22·7 per cent. figure for 1951.
Of course, there has been some increase. But it is wrong in the circumstances to refer to that increase as an intimation of increasing hardship, for this reason. The right hon. Gentleman may not have followed this, but in September last, for the first time since the National Assistance Board was created, there was a real and deliberate increase in real standards. Not merely, as was the case before, just enough and a little bit more to take care of the changes in prices, but an increase in the real value irrespective of the very small price changes which had taken place since the last increase. At the same time the disregards, that is the amount


a person can have without being denied supplementation, were increased. Both that increase in scale rates and, still more, the increase in disregards would plainly have failed if the number and the proportion of people and of pensioners receiving supplementation had not increased. There is another factor and I acknowledge it at once. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House—I am thankful for it— played a considerable part in seeking to overcome the unwillingness of a minority of people to exercise their right to have supplementation. We have all done our best to try to bring that about and it would be an intimation of failure if we had not caused more and more people to apply, and so further increased these figures.
I do not accept—I take this opportunity of saying so—the figure of the hon. Member for Coventry, East which he gave in his famous television broadcast, and which was repeated in a sound broadcast in almost identical terms by the Leader of the Opposition—they were in happy unison on that occasion—that there are 500,000 people eligible for assistance but too proud to claim it. I do not believe that any such figure can be sustained. Nor do I like the idea of suggesting that there are people too proud to claim it, because that carries with it the implication that those who do exercise their proper right are doing something which harms their pride, and that is wrong. There may have been a few people in that position; it is not my job to argue to the contrary. But it is our combined efforts and the combined efforts of the chairman and other members of the National Assistance Board which have caused some increase in those figures.
Therefore, of course, we watch them. They are an important factor in the situation. And these are new circumstances because we are in the position of having a new and higher scale of benefits for National Assistance. It is necessary for the House to remember that, in view of these figures—

Mr. Crossman: We based those figures on three sample surveys in three cities. If the right hon. Gentleman does not accept the Labour Party's figures, he should conduct an investigation throughout the country and give us the facts. We should be very grateful if he would

do so, but we have been denied them from his Ministry.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Member has been denied no figures by my Ministry which I have been able to obtain. That is not so. The Assistance Board is just as keen as the hon. Member to ascertain what truth there is in this because, if it can obtain the facts, it can combat the trouble, but there is no reason to believe that this is so. In this I am reinforced by the experience of the Board throughout the country that nothing like that number of cases exists.
There is only one other major point. The whole case has been made on grounds of hardship. It has been suggested in speech after speech that the terms "retirement pensioners" or "old-age pensioners", which have been used equally frequently, are synonymous with the term "poor people". That is really not true. There are 5,400,000 retirement pensioners today, a cross-section of every part of our varied and variegated community. I am not disputing that there are cases of difficulty— of course there are—but it does not help in dealing with real cases of difficulty to make these wild allegations about this very large number of our fellow citizens.
Hon. and right hon. Members opposite must get out of the old-fashioned thinking to the effect that that is so. Nor must they delude themselves with the idea that any pensioner who is a householder need necessarily live on the bare retirement pension alone. That is a fact which hon. and right hon. Members opposite have entirely ignored. Of course there is a case—we have said it and I have said it at this Box—for making steady improvements in the standards of life of our older citizens.
Hon. and right hon. Members opposite ask, "When?" I say this to them. At the General Election we, unlike them, declined to give in advance a precise date or a precise amount. No doubt we suffered some electoral disadvantage because of that, although I am bound to say it did not seem in the result to do us much harm; but we did not say so for reasons which we made clear at the time, because we believed it was the wrong way in which to handle this immense social problem. When we come to the moment for making


changes of this sort, we have to face a variety of factors.
We declined at that election to take the easy road which hon. and right hon. Members opposite took of offering precise sums. We do not propose to depart from that line by making forecasts tonight. We base ourselves tonight, as we did at the election on the confidence of our fellow countrymen that our record in handling these matters entitles us to the trust which not promises, but performance, confers.

Mr. Lawson: rose—

Mr. Herbert W. Bowden: Mr. Herbert W. Bowden (Leicester, South-West) rose in his place, and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question: —

The House divided: Ayes 222, Noes 296.

Division No. 51.]
AYES
[10.0 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Foot, Dingle
MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)


Ainsley, William
Forman, J. C.
Mahon, Simon


Albu, Austen
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. Hugh
Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield,E.)


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Ginsburg, David
Manuel, A. C.


Awbery, Stan
Gooch, E. G.
Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Gourlay, Harry
Marsh, Richard


Baxter, William (Stirlingshire, W.)
Greenwood, Anthony
Mason, Roy


Beaney, Alan
Grey, Charles
Mayhew, Christopher


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Mendelson, J. J.


Bence, Cyril (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Grimond, J.
Millan, Bruce


Benn, Hn. A.Wedgwood(Brist'l,S.E.)
Gunter, Ray
Mitchison, G. R.


Benson, Sir George
Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)
Monslow, Walter


Blackburn, F.
Hamilton, William (West Fife)
Moody, A. S.


Blyton, William
Hart, Mrs. Judith
Morris, John


Boardman, H.
Hayman, F. H.
Mulley, Frederick


Bowden, Herbert W. (Leics, S.W.)
Healey, Denis
Neal, Harold


Bowen, Roderic (Cardigan)
Herbison, Miss Margaret
Noel-Baker,Rt.Hn.Philip(Derby,S.)


Bowles, Frank
Hill, J. (Midlothian)
Oliver, G. H.


Boyden, James
Holman, Percy
Oram, A. E.


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
Holt, Arthur
Oswald, Thomas


Brockway, A. Fenner
Houghton, Douglas
Owen, Will


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Howell, Charles A.
Padley, W. E.


Brown, Alan (Tottenham)
Hoy, James H.
Pargiter, G. A.


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Parker, John (Dagenham)


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Parkin, B. T. (Paddington, N.)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Pavitt, Laurence


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Hunter. A. E.
Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)


Callaghan, James
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Peart, Frederick


Carmichael, James
Hynd, John (Attercliffe)
Pentland, Norman


Castle, Mrs. Barbara
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Plummer, Sir Leslie


Chapman, Donald
Irving, Sydney (Dartford)
Prentice, R. E.


Chetwynd, George
Janner, Barnett
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Cliffe, Michael
Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas
Proctor, W. T.


Collick, Percy
Jeger, George
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)
Randall, Harry


Graddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Rankin, John


Cronin, John
Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)
Redhead, E. C.


Crosland, Anthony
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Reid, William


Crossman, R. H. S.
Jones, Elwyn (West Ham, S.)
Reynolds, G. W.


Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Robens, Rt. Hon. Alfred


Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Robinson, Kenneth (St.Pancras, N.)


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Kenyon, Clifford
Ross, William


Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Royle, Charles (Salford, West)


Deer, George
King, Dr. Horace
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.


de Freitas, Geoffrey
Lawson, George
Short, Edward


Dempsey, James
Ledger, Ron
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Dodds, Norman
Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Donnelly, Desmond
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Skeffington, Arthur


Driberg, Tom
Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)


Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John
Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Small, William


Ede, Rt. Hon. Chuter
Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Edelman, Maurice
Lipton, Marcus
Snow, Julian


Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Logan, David
Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Loughlin, Charles
Spriggs, Leslie


Edwards, Walter (Stepney)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Steele, Thomas


Evans Albert
MacColl, James
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)


Fernyhough, E.
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Stonehouse, John


Finch, Harold
Mackle, John
Stones, William


Fitch, Alan
McLeavy, Frank
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)


Fletcher, Eric
MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles)
Stross,Dr.Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent,C.)




Summerskill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Edith
Wade, Donald
Williams, D. J. (Neath)


Swingler, Stephen
Wainwright, Edwin
Williams, Rev. LI. (Abertillery)


Sylvester, George
Warbey, William
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Symonds, J. B.
Watkins, Tudor
Willis, E. G. (Edinburgh, E.)


Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)
Weitzman, David
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Thomas. George (Cardiff, W.)
Wells, Percy (Faversham)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Thomas, lorwerth (Rhondda, W.)
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)
Woof, Robert


Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)
White, Mrs. Eirene
Wyatt, Woodrow


Thornton, Ernest
Whitlock, William
Yates, Victor (Ladywood)


Thorpe, Jeremy
Wigg, George
Zilliacus, K.


Timmons, John
Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.



Tomney, Frank
Wilkins, W. A.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn
Willey, Frederick
Mr. John Taylor and




Mr. Rogers




NOES


Agnew, Sir Peter
Deedes, W. F.
Hutchison, Michael Clark


Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)
de Ferranti, Basil
Iremonger, T. L.


Allason, James
Dighy, Simon Wingfield
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)


Alport, C. J. M.
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. M.
Jackson, John


Amory, Rt. Hn. D. Heathcoat (Tiv'tn)
Doughty, Charles
James, David


Arbuthnot, John
Drayson, G. B.
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)


Ashton, Sir Hubert
Duncan, Sir James
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)


Atkins, Humphrey
Duthie, Sir William
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)


Balniel, Lord
Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir David
Johnson Smith, Geoffrey


Barber, Anthony
Eden, John
Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)


Barlow, Sir John
Elliott, R. W.
Joseph, Sir Keith


Barter, John
Emery, Peter
Kaberry, Sir Donald


Batsford, Brian
Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn
Kerans, Cdr. J. S.


Baxter, Sir Beverley (Southgate)
Errington, Sir Eric
Kerby, Capt. Henry


Beamish, Col. Tufton
Erroll, F. J.
Kerr, Sir Hamilton


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Farey-Jones, F. W.
Kimball, Marcus


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos &amp; Fhm)
Farr, John
Kirk, Peter


Berkeley, Humphry
Fell, Anthony
Kitson, Timothy


Bevins, Rt Hon. Reginald (Toxteth)
Finlay, Graeme
Lagden, Godfrey


Bidgood, John C.
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Lancaster, Col. C. G.


Biggs-Davison, John
Fraser, Hn. Hugh (Stafford &amp; Stone)
Leather, E. H. C.


Bingham, R. M.
Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)
Leburn, Gilmour


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Legge-Bourke, Maj. H.


Bishop, F. P.
Gammans, Lady
Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. Alan


Black, Sir Cyril
Gardner, Edward
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)


Bossom, Clive
George, J. C. (Pollok)
Lindsay, Martin


Bourne-Arton, A.
Gibson-Watt, David
Linstead, Sir Hugh


Box, Donald
Glover, Sir Douglas
Litchfield, Capt. John


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. John
Glyn, Dr. Alan (Clapham)
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)


Boyle, Sir Edward
Glyn, Col. Richard H. (Dorset, N.)
Longden, Gilbert


Braine, Bernard
Godber, J. B.
Low, Rt. Hon. Sir Toby


Brewis, John
Goodhew, Victor
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Gower, Raymond
McAdden, Stephen


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Grant, Rt. Hon. William (Woodside)
MacArthur, Ian


Brooman-White. R.
Green, Alan
McLaren, Martin


Browne, Percy (Torrington)
Gresham Cooke, R.
McLaughlin, Mrs. Patricia


Bryan, Paul
Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.
Maclay, Rt. Hon. John


Bullard, Denys
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Bute &amp; N. Ayrs.)


Bullus, Wing Commander Eric
Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)
McLean, Neil (Inverness)


Burden, F. A.
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)


Butcher, Sir Herbert
Harris, Reader (Heston)
MacLeod, John (Ross &amp; Cromarty)


Butler, Rt.Hn.R.A.(Saffron Walden)
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
McMaster, Stanley R.


Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)
Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)
Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold (Bromley)


Campbell, Gordon (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)


Carr, Compton (Barons Court)
Harvie Anderson, Miss
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)


Carr, Robert (Mitcham)
Hay, John
Maddan, Martin


Cary, Sir Robert
Heath, Rt. Hon. Edward
Maginnis, John E.


Channon, H. P. G.
Henderson, John (Cathcart)
Maitland, Cdr. J. W.


Chataway, Christopher
Hendry, A. Forbes
Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.


Chichester-Clark, R.
Hicks Beach, Maj. W.
Markham, Major Sir Frank


Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)
Hiley, Joseph
Marples, Rt. Hon. Ernest


Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)
Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Marshall, Douglas


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)
Marten, Neil


Cleaver, Leonard
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Mathew, Robert (Honiton)


Cooke, Robert
Hirst, Geoffrey
Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)


Cooper, A. E.
Hobson, John
Maudling, Rt. Hon. Reginald


Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
Hocking, Philip N.
Mawby, Ray


Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.
Holland, Philip
Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.


Cordle, John
Hollingworth, John
Milligan, Rt. Hon. W. R.


Corfield, F. V.
Hope, Rt. Hon. Lord John
Mills, Stratton


Costain, A. P.
Hopkins, Alan
Montgomery, Fergus


Coulson, J. M.
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hon. Patricia
Morgan, William


Courtney, Cdr. Anthony
Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)
Morrison, John


Critchley, Julian
Howard, Hon. G. R. (St. Ives)
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Howard, John (Southampton, Test)
Nabarro, Gerald


Cunningham, Knox
Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral John
Nicholls, Harmar


Curran, Charles
Hughes-Young, Michael
Nicholson, Sir Godfrey


Currie, G. B. H.
Hulbert, Sir Norman
Noble, Michael


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hurd, Sir Anthony
Oakshott, Sir Hendrie




Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)


Orr-Ewing, C. lan
Robson Brown, Sir William
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Osborn, John (Hallam)
Roots, William
Turner, Colin


Page, Graham
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Pannell, Norman (Kirkdale)
Russell, Ronald
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)
Sandys, Rt. Hon. Duncan
Vane, W. M. F.


Peel, John
Scott-Hopkins, James
Vaughan-Morgan, Sir John


Perolval, lan
Seymour, Leslie
Vickers, Miss Joan


Peyton, John
Sharples, Richard
Vosper, Rt. Hon. Dennis


Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Simon, Sir Jocelyn
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)


Pike, Miss Mervyn
Skeet, T. H. H.
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Derek


Pilkington, Capt. Richard
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'd &amp; Chiswick)
Ward, Rt. Hon. George (Worcester)


Pitt, Miss Edith
Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher
Watts, James


Pott, Percivall
Speir, Rupert
Webster, David


Powell, J. Enoch
Stanley, Hon. Richard
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Price, David (Eastleigh)
Stevens, Geoffrey
Whitelaw, William


Price, H. A. (Lewisham, W.)
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Williams, Dudley (Exeter)


Prior, J. M. L.
Stodart, J. A.
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Prior-Palmer, Brig, Sir Otho
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Profumo, Rt. Hon. John
Storey, Sir Samuel
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Proudfoot, Wilfred
Studholme, Sir Henry
Wise, Alfred


Ramsden, James
Summers, Sir Spencer (Aylesbury)
Wolrlge-Gordon, Patrick


Rawlinson, Peter
Sumner, Donald (Orpington)
Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard


Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin
Talbot, John E.
Woodhouse, C. M.


Rees, Hugh
Tapsell, Peter
Woodnutt, Mark


Rees-Davies, W. R.
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Woollam, John


Renton, David
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret
Worsley, Marcus


Ridley, Hon. Nicholas
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)



Ridsdale, Julian
Thomas, Peter (Conway)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)
Mr. Legh and


Robertson, Sir David
Thomton-Kemsley, Sir Colin
Mr. Edward Wakefield.

Question put, That the proposed words be there added:—

The House divided: Ayes 297, Noes 222.

Division No. 52.]
AYES
[10.12 p.m.


Agnew, Sir Peter
Channon, H. P. G.
George, J. C. (Pollok)


Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)
Chataway, Christopher
Gibson-Watt, David


Allason, James
Chichester-Clark, R.
Glover, Sir Douglas


Alport, C. J. M.
Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)
Glyn, Dr. Alan (Clapham)


Amory,Rt. Hn. D. Heathcoat (Tlv'tn)
Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)
Glyn, Col. Richard H. (Dorset, N.)


Arbuthnot, John
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Godber, J. B.


Ashton, Sir Hubert
Cleaver, Leonard
Goodhew, Victor


Atkins, Humphrey
Cooke, Robert
Gower, Raymond


Balniel, Lord
Cooper, A. E.
Grant, Rt. Hon. William (Woodlide)


Barber, Anthony
Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
Green, Alan


Barlow, Sir John
Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.
Cresham Cooke, R.


Barter, John
Cordle, John
Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.


Batsford, Brian
Corfield, F. V.
Hall, John (Wycombe)


Baxter, Sir Beverley (Southgate)
Costain, A. P.
Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)


Beamish, Col. Tufton
Coulson, J. M.
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Courtney, Cdr. Anthony
Harris, Reader (Heston)


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos &amp; Fhm)
Critchley, Julian
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)


Berkeley, Humphry
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)


Bevins, Rt. Hon. Reginald (Toxteth)
Cunningham, Knox
Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)


Bidgood, John C.
Curran, Charles
Harvie Anderson, Miss


Biggs-Davison, John
Currie, G. B. H.
Hay, John


Bingham, R. M.
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Heath, Rt. Hon. Edward


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Deedes, W. F.
Henderson, John (Cathcart)


Bishop, F. P.
de Ferranti, Basil
Hendry, Forbes


Black, Sir Cyril
Digby, Simon Wingfleld
Hicks Beach, MaJ. W.


Boosom, Clive
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. M.
Hlley, Joseph


Bourne-Arton, A.
Doughty, Charles
Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)


Box, Donald
Drayson, G. B.
Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. John
Duncan, sir James
Hinchlngbrooke, Viscount


Boyle, Sir Edward
Duthie, Sir William
Hirst, Geoffrey


Braine, Bernard
Eccles, Rt. Hon. sir David
Hobson, John


Brewis, John
Eden, John
Hocking, Philip N.


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Elliott, R. W.
Holland, Philip


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Emery, Peter
Hollingworth, John


Brooman-White, R.
Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn
Hope, Rt. Hon. Lord John


Browne, Percy (Torrington)
Errington, Sir Eric
Hopkins, Alan


Bryan, Paul
Erroll, F. J.
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hon. Patricia


Bullard, Denys
Farey-Jones, F. W.
Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)


Bullus, Wing Commander Eric
Farr, John
Howard, Hon. G. R. (St. lves)


Burden, F. A.
Fell, Anthony
Howard, John (Southampton, Test)


Butcher, Sir Herbert
Finlay, Graeme
Hughes Hallett, Vine-Admiral John


Butler, Rt.Hn.R.A.(Saffron Walden)
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Hughes-Young, Michael


Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)
Fraser, Hn. Hugh (Stafford &amp; Stone)
Hulbert, Sir Norman


Campbell, Gordon (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Fraser, lan (Plymouth, Sutton)
Hurd, Sir Anthony


Carr, Compton (Barons Court)
Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Hutchison, Michael Clark


Carr, Robert (Mitcham)
Gammans, Lady
Iremonger, T. L.


Cary, Sir Robert
Gardner, Edward
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)




Jackson, John
Mawby, Ray
Simon, Sir Jocelyn


James, David
Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.
Skeet, T. H. H.


Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Milligan, Rt. Hon. W. R.
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'rd &amp; Chiswick)


Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Mills, Stratton
Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher


Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Montgomery, Fergus
Speir, Rupert


Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Morgan, William
Stanley, Hon. Richard


Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)
Morrison, John
Stevens, Geoffrey


Joseph, Sir Keith
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Kaberry, Sir Donald
Nabarro, Gerald
Stodart, J. A.


Kerans, Cdr. J. S.
Nicholls, Harmar
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm


Kerby, Capt. Henry
Nicholson, Sir Godfrey
Storey, Sir Samuel


Kerr, Sir Hamilton
Noble, Michael
Studholme, Sir Henry


Kimball, Marcus
Oakshott, Sir Hendrle
Summers, Sir Spencer (Aylesbury)


Kirk, Peter
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Sumner, Donald (Orpington)


Kitson, Timothy
Orr-Ewing, C. Ian
Talbot, John E.


Lagden, Godfrey
Osborn, John (Hallam)
Tapsell, Peter


Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Page, Graham
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Leather, E. H. C.
Pannell, Norman (Kirkdale)
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Leburn, Gilmour
Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Legge-Bourke, Maj. H.
Peel, John
Thomas, Peter (Conway)


Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. Alan
Percival, Ian
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Peyton, John
Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin


Lindsay, Martin
Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)


Linstead, Sir Hugh
Pike, Miss Mervyn
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Litchfield, Capt. John
Pilkington, Capt. Richard
Turner, Colin


Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Pitt, Miss Edith
Tweedsmuir Lady


Longden, Gilbert
Pott, Percivall
van straubenzee, W. H.


Low, Rt. Hon. Sir Toby
Powell, J. Enoch
Vane, W. M. F.


Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Vaughan-Morgan, Sir Joh


McAdden, Stephen
Price, H. A. (Lewisham, W.)
Vickers, Miss Joan


McArthur, Ian
Prior, J. M. L.
Vosper, Rt. Hon. Dennis


McLaren, Martin
Prior-Palmer, Brig, Sir Otho
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St.M'lebone)


McLaughlin, Mrs. Patricla
Profumo, Rt. Hon. John
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Derek


Maclay, Rt. Hon. John
Proudfoot, Wilfred
Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)


Maclean, SirFitzroy (Bute &amp;N.Ayrs)
Ramsden, James
Watts, James


McLean, Neil (Inverness)
Rawlinson, Peter



Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin
Webster, David


MacLeod, John (Ross &amp; Cromarty)
Rees, Hugh
Wells, John (Maidstone)


McMaster, Stanley R.
Rees-Davies, W. R.



Macmillan,Rt.Hn.Harold(Bromley)
Renton, David
Whitelaw, William


Macmillan, Maurice (Hallfax)
Ridley, Hon. Nicholas
Williams, Dudley (Exeter)


Macphereon, Niall (Dumfries)
Bidsdale, Julian
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Maddan, Martin
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Maginnis, John E.
Robertson, Sir David
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Maitland, Cdr. J. W.
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Wise, A. R.


Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.
Robson Brown, Sir William
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Markham, Major Sir Frank
Roots, William
Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard


Marples, Rt. Hon. Ernest
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard
Woodhouse, C. M,


Marshall, Douglas
Russell, Ronald
Woodnutt, Mark


Marten, Neil
Sandys, Rt. Hon. Duncan
Woollam, John


Mathew, Robert (Honiton)
Scott-Hopkins, James
Worsley, Marcus


Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)
Seymour, Leslie



Maudling, Rt. Hen. Reginald
Sharples, Richard
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:




Mr. Legh and Mr. Wakefield.




NOES


Abse, Leo
Carmichael, James
Fernyhough, E.


Ainsley, William
Castle, Mrs. Barbara
Finch, Harold


Albu, Austen
Chapman, Donald
Fitch, Alan


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Chetwynd, George
Fletcher, Eric


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Cliffe, Michael
Foot, Dingle


Awbery, Stan
Collick, Percy
Forman, J. C,


Bacon, Miss Alice
Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)


Baxter, William (Stirlingshire, W.)
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. Hugh


Beaney, Alan
Cronin, John
Ginsburg, David


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Crosland, Anthony
Gooch, E. G.


Bence, Cyril (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Crossman, R. H. S.
Gourlay, Harry


Benn, Hn. A. Wedgwood(Brist'l,S.E.)
Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Greenwood, Anthony


Benson, Sir Ceorge
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Grey, Charles


Blackburn, F.
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)


Blyton, William
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Grimond, J.


Boardman, H.
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Gunter, Ray


Bowden, Herbert W. (Leics, S.W.)
Deer, George
Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil(Coine Valley)


Bowen, Roderlc (Cardigan)
de Freitas, Geoffrey
Hamilton, William (West Fife)


Bowles, Frank
Dempsey, James
Hart, Mrs. Judith


Boyden, James
Dodds, Norman
Hayman, F. H.


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
Donnelly, Desmond
Healey, Denis


Brockway, A. Fenner
Driberg, Tom
Herbison, Miss Margaret


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John
Hill, J. (Midlothian)


Brown, Alan (Tottenham)
Ede, Rt. Hon. Chuter
Holman, Percy


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Edelman, Maurice
Holt, Arthur


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Houghton, Douglas


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Howell, Charles A.


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Edwards, Walter (Stepney)
Hoy, James H.


Callaghan, James
Evans, Albert
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)







Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Mendelson, J. J.
Spriggs, Leslie


Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Millan, Bruce
Steele, Thomas


Hunter, A. E.
Mitchison, G. R.
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)


Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Monslow, Walter
Stonehouse, John


Hynd, John (Attercliffe)
Moody, A. S.
Stones, William


Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Morris, John
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)


Irving, Sydney (Dartford)
Mulley, Frederick
Stross,Dr.Barnet(Stoke-on-Trent,C.)


Janner, Barnett
Neal, Harold
Summerskill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Edith


Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas
Noel-Baker,Rt.Hn.Philip(Derby,S.)
Swingler, Stephen


Jeger, George
Oliver, G. H.
Sylvester, George


Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)
Oram, A. E.
Symonds, J. B.


Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Oswald, Thomas
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)
Owen, Will
Thomas, George (Cardiff, w.)


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Padley, W. E.
Thomas, lorwerth (Rhondda, W.)


Jones, Elwyn (West Ham, S.)
Pargiter, G. A.
Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)


Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Parker, John (Dagenham)
Thornton, Ernest


Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Parkin, B. T. (Paddington, N.)
Thorpe, Jeremy


Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Pavitt, Laurence
Timmons, John


Kenyon, Clifford
Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)
Tomney, Frank


Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Peart, Frederick
Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn


King, Dr. Horace
Pentland, Norman
Wade, Donald


Lawson, George
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Wainwright, Edwin


Ledger, Ron
Prentice, R. E.
Warbey, William


Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Watkins, Tudor


Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Proctor, W. T.
Weltzman, David


Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry
Wells Percy (Faversham)


Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Randall, Harry
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)
Rankin, John
White Mrs. Eirene


Lipton, Marcus
Redhead, E. C.
Whitlock, William


Logan, David
Re[...]dWilliam
Wigg, George


Loughlin, Charles
Reynolds, G. W.
Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.


Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Robens, Rt. Hon. Alfred
Wilkins, W. A.


MacColl, James
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Wllley, Frederick


McKay, John (Wallsend)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Williams, D. J. (Neath)


Mackie, John
Ross, William
Williams, Rev. Ll. (Abertillery)


McLeavy, Frank
Royle, Charles (Salford, West)
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


MacMillan, Malcolm (Western lsles)
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Willis, E. G. (Edinburgh, E.)


MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Short, Edward
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Mahon, Simon
Silverman, Julius (Aston)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Woof, Robert


Mallalieu,J.P.W.(Huddersfield,E.)
Skeffington, Arthur
Wyatt, Woodrow


Manuel, A. C.
Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)
Yates, Victor (Ladywood)


Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.
Small, William
Zilliacus, K.


Marsh, Richard
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)



Mason, Roy
Snow, Julian
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Mayhew, Christopher
Sotkice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank
Mr. John Taylor and Mr. Rogers.

Main Question, as amended, put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House, noting that national insurance benefits are in real terms substantially higher than they were at any time under

any Labour Government, and having regard to the steadiness of prices, and the improvements made by Her Majesty's Government in the social service benefits, expresses its confidence that Her Majesty's Government will continue to give to the pensioner a share in the increasing prosperity which wise economic policies will continue to bring about

Orders of the Day — INNER CIRCUIT ROAD, BRISTOL

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bryan.]

10.24 p.m.

Mr. Martin McLaren: I am glad to have the opportunity to raise the subject of the Inner Circuit Road at Bristol, and I shall try to show that this is not only a constituency point but one that raises wider issues which apply in other places also.
Put quite simply, we in Bristol wish to construct the proposed new section called stage 3 of this road running from St. James' Barton to Wellington Road. The only difficulty is who should foot the bill. In major road improvements of this kind, there is a partnership between local authorities and the central Government by which local authorities pay a quarter of the cost and the central Government are asked, by way of Government grant, to find the remaining three-quarters. Bristol Corporation is fully prepared to pay its quarter share out of its rate fund. We are asking that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport should authorise a Government grant for the balance. I shall try to show why we want this road and why we ought to have it.
One thing that experts on traffic in large cities agree about is that an inner circuit road is needed. Only in the last few days we have heard that the Minister was opening the first section of a similar inner circuit road in Birmingham. Also, in the last few days, we have heard that a similar kind of project was planned for Glasgow. Nowhere is such a road more needed than in a city like Bristol, which has a lovely circular heart consisting of a maze of narrow streets, the plan of which has been handed down from medieval days. The traffic situation in Bristol is also complicated by our two rivers, the Avon and the Frome, and the Floating Harbour which winds through the middle of the city, with too few bridges, some of which have to be raised to allow ships to pass. We have to deal with and disperse all the heavy traffic which goes to and from our flourishing docks.
As is well known, Bristol suffered very severe bombing during the war, and much reconstruction has been necessary. This road will help the development of this part of the city. So far, £179,000 has been spent on the acquisition of land and adjoining development, but little benefit has yet been received from the expenditure of that sum.
This Inner Circuit road is not new. It was started over twenty years ago, before the war, but no circle is any good until it is complete. We are asking for this new extension to make our circle perfect and to relieve traffic congestion over a large area. Bristol is a bottleneck between the Midlands and the South-West, and this improvement will be of much more than local benefit.
We have been told about a new motorway between Birmingham and Bristol. I should like to quote from something that the Parliamentary Secretary said when opening the New Ferry by-pass on 30th November last. He said:
It is no good having fine new fast roads up and down the country only for them to end in appalling bottlenecks and congestion in our towns and cities.
How right he was. He was right to emphasise the importance of major works for the relief of urban traffic congestion, and that is why we must complete our Inner Circuit Road.
Let us remember a paragraph in the Gracious Speech at the beginning of this Session:
In order to develop a sound system of communications throughout the country, My Government will press forward with their policy of building new highways and improving existing roads.
That is what we want to see happening —a little more pressing forward and less hanging back.
We had a previous scheme of a similar kind which was put forward in 1958 but which was never accepted by the Minister, and this one has not yet been accepted. We know the official line, that the money which is available must be used for building motor roads, improving the main industrial routes of the country and eliminating the black spots which have high accident rates. But all that presupposes that the Minister can determine scientifically and accurately the order of priorities. I am not sure that that is always so.
The other day I was sent a printed lecture about traffic which I thought was an excellent lecture. There was one point in it which I thought came very close to our present subject. It was the Henry Spurrier Lecture delivered before the Institute of Transport. One short extract from it which I should like to quote says:
You may ask, how is it decided whether a widening scheme in Newcastle is more urgent than a new bridge in, say, Bristol, or whether a large scheme costing £500,000 is more worth doing than ten schemes costing £50,000 each. There is no absolute answer, nor can there be until a really accurate method of measuring the economic justification of improvements is evolved.
I heartily agree with those words. The interesting thing is that the author of that lecture was Sir James Dunnett, the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, so we have it, as it were, straight from the horse's mouth. I think that more attention might perhaps be paid to local opinion as to which schemes are thought to be the best.
It is sometimes argued in the Ministry that because one has received the benefit of other improvements in the same area one is ruled out and must keep quiet for a little while. That surely is a fallacy, because each scheme should be treated on its merits.
Perhaps in the end my right hon. Friend may find that he needs more money, because what is undoubtedly happening at the moment is that Government spending in this direction does not keep pace with the capacity of the civil engineering industry nor with the desire of the local authorities to pay their share and to undertake their own local developments.
Our road expenditure, if measured as a percentage of gross national product, is far less than that of the United States and less, too, than that of Italy, Western Germany, France or Belgium. I understand that it is at this time of the year that the programme for the future financial year is usually mapped out. I hope that the arguments that I have tried to put on the merits of this Inner Circuit Road will help our project to be better understood and that my right hon. Friend will decide to authorise the project for grant.

10.34 p.m.

Mr. Stan Awbery: The question of the Inner Circuit Road in Bristol has been agitating the minds of the people of the city and of the councillors for a considerable time. We have been urging the Minister to do something to complete this road. Deputations have come to London from Bristol to interview the Minister and to put before him the need for completing the road, but nothing has been done.
Since May. of last year I have put down four Questions to the Minister asking him to give urgent attention to the question of this road. The Chamber of Commerce has written to him a very long letter explaining the need for the completion of the road. It points out that many business people have purchased land in that area because they were given to understand that a circuit road would be completed within a reasonable time. The road has not been completed. The result is that these people are losing a considerable amount of money, and they are asking the Minister to give his attention to this problem so that they will be able to get on with their legitimate business when the road is completed.
On 6th May last year I put down a Question to the Minister pointing out to him that the non-completion of this road was causing a loss of revenue to Bristol, and asking him to give urgent consideration to the matter, so that the area could be developed as a central shopping area. Nothing was done. I hope that the Minister will do more tonight than undertake to give the matter urgent consideration; I hope that he will give an indication that the Government are prepared to contribute the 75 per cent. of the cost of the scheme asked for by the local authority. As it indicated to him, about two years ago, the council is prepared to pay 25 per cent. of the cost, and it has called upon the Government to provide the other 75 per cent.
On 2nd December last year I put down another Question to the Minister, pointing out that the manufacturers and business people of Bristol were suffering considerable hardships because of the delay in dealing with this problem. I got no satisfaction. The Minister said that the Bristol Corporation was the highway authority for the road, and he


knew that it was anxious to get on with the job, but the part of the scheme already completed, in respect of which the Government had made a 75 per cent. grant, was essential, whereas the remaining part was not. I submit that the unfinished part is just as essential as that part which has been finished. If part of a circular road is incomplete it nullifies the whole effect.
On 16th December I again raised the matter. The Chamber of Commerce has seen me and has sent letters to me and to the Minister indicating what was required and urging him to remove the bottleneck now existing in the city by completing the work. On 3rd February I returned to the subject. I have submitted Questions to him on four occasions, the Chamber of Commerce has written to him, and two deputations have seen him. I want the Minister to regard this as an urgent matter, and to give an undertaking tonight that he will see that the job is put in hand.

10.40 p.m.

Mr. Robert Cooke: I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) on his foresight in having raised this subject tonight, and to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Hopkins) has also shown an interest in the matter. I refrained from taking part in the agitation on this subject in the last Parliament, but I feel now that the time has come when this vital service should be provided for Bristol. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to give us a favourable reply this evening.

10.41 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay): Tonight I am surrounded by hon. Members from Bristol. Although not all of them have spoken, I think it is clear from the speeches to which we have listened that there is strong feeling about the Inner Circuit Road in Bristol. This debate, which necessarily must be brief, takes place against the background of the Civil Estimates which were published yesterday and which show the amounts we are to spend on roads in the forthcoming financial year. They show a rise of £114 million in the funds for roads. In all £62·7 million is to be spent on trunk roads, including the motorways,

and £38·9 million on the classified roads, a total for new construction and major and minor improvements and for maintenance of £101·6 million. Including various miscellaneous services, the total we shall spend on roads in this coming year is £105·6 million.
The scheme in Bristol is one of the classified road schemes. In the coming year we propose to spend £38·9 million on classified roads of all kinds, £14·5 million will be on new construction and major improvements and £232 million on maintenance and minor improvements. This reflects the Minister's policy of priorities for our road system and as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) said, this consists first of giving priority to the motorways, secondly to directing what funds we can to the improvement of the industrial roads of the country, thirdly to relieve traffic congestion and delay, both in the cities and in the country and finally to trying to clean up the accident black spots.
Even the amount of money we are talking about now, over £100 million to be spent on roads in one year, is not enough to do all that we should like to do, or to do it as quickly as we should wish. With the particular task I have in the Government I find that every highway authority in the country has its desirable scheme and all of them would like to have their schemes attended to at once. I think it is obvious that we cannot do it all at once. It will take some time to clear many of these schemes, but we will do the best we can.
Before turning to the problem of Bristol may I dispose of some of the illusions about the system by which we make grants for the improvement of classified roads and say something about the basis on which they are fixed. There is a fairly widespread idea that the Ministry of Transport "allocates" a certain amount of grant money to highway authorities each year for major improvements schemes in the same way as it does for maintenance work, and that if the grants in one year for one authority amount to less than for the previous year it means that the "programme" of the local authority has somehow been "cut". These notions have gained a lot of currency, particularly in the southwest of England and have persisted in


spite of repeated corrections by my right hon. Friend's predecessor, by my predecessor and by the Ministry generally.
A programme in this false sense does not exist. There is no such thing as a geographical allocation of money for this purpose. Our system is to choose the most urgently needed schemes on their merits, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West said, wherever they happen to be. This means that in one year one authority may get several schemes and in the next year few or perhaps none.
A partial exception are the small schemes costing less than £25,000. These schemes are numerous and their priority claims are difficult to compare. By and large, highway authorities receive grants for these schemes at more regular levels within whatever sum is set aside each year for this category.
So long as the demand for schemes by highway authorities exceeds the supply of grant money available this national priority system is inescapable if funds are to be spent in the most effective way. To local eyes it may seem that the omission of some scheme or other from the programme is inexplicable, but it means only that elsewhere there are schemes even more urgent which must be tackled first.
Another phrase which is often misused or misunderstood is "fair share". A local authority may complain that it does not get what it calls its fair share of major improvements. We ourselves avoid using this expression because it can easily be, and often is, taken to mean, like the word "allocation", some standard proportion of the funds available, or the issue of funds on some kind of rota system to highway authorities. There is no such system. Our only criterion is and must be to choose each year those schemes which are most urgent, irrespective of their geographical location.
May I now come to the situation in Bristol? To put the matter in perspective, I must remind the House that since 1956 we have made a number of grants to Bristol. Nearly £500,000 has been given in this way. The actual figure is £472,000. Already in the programme there are two schemes—the Feeder Road bridge and the Passage Road scheme which is part of the Filton

by pass substitute. The Feeder Road bridge scheme will involve a grant of £21,000 and the Passage Road scheme a giant of £53,000. In addition, we have spent and given by way of grant £95,000 for the Inner Circuit Road, stages 1 and 2, to which the hon. Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Awbery) referred, which were completed by 1958.
Bristol has asked us to approve stage 3 of the Inner Circuit Road and to put it in our programme. If we accept the estimates and figures, the amount of grant is in the order of £305,000. Bristol has a number of other schemes in hand, and two in particular are large ones. There is the Cumberland Basin scheme which would cost us as grant £1·7 million and the Bedminster Bridge improvement which would cost in grant £323,000. These, together with the Inner Circuit Road, stage 3, are parts of a programme which the Bristol Corporation has put forward and which will take five years to complete. I must say frankly that many other highway authorities are equally ambitious and many of them are equally impatient.

Mr. Awbery: Does the Minister realise that there is a difference between the three schemes, that there are two separate schemes and this scheme, on which thousands of pounds have already been spent, but we cannot use it because we cannot complete that circle? I am asking that the circle should be completed.

Mr. Hay: I am coming to that. I am merely saying that we have already had intimation from Bristol that it would like to do these three big schemes in a five-year period—Cumberland Basin, Bedminster Bridge and the third stage of the Inner Circuit Road. Many other highway authorities are often importunate and impatient because we cannot give them the money as quickly as we would like, but I would underline as strongly as I can that this year we have only £14½ million available for new construction and major improvements on classified roads in the whole of England and Wales. That means that we have to be rather strict about the priorities that we observe.
We are now in process of reviewing our programme for 1960–61 and we are shortly starting a review of the programme for the following year 1961–62. As a result of our review of the present programme, it may be possible to include a few more


schemes than we had thought. Inevitably when one establishes a programme some schemes fall out because they are not quite ready and that means that we may have more money available for new schemes. I am glad to be able to tell the House that the Bristol Inner Circuit Road, stage 3, comes into this category. I can tell my hon Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport expects to be able to make a grant for stage 3 of the road in the next financial year which starts in April. I think that was what hon. Members who have taken part in the debate have asked for.

Mr. W. A. Wilkins: We have been asking for it for twelve months.

Mr. Hay: I hope that the hon. Gentleman is pleased that we have been able to find the money for this. It has not been an easy task.
The long patience that Bristol has shown has at last been rewarded. We are delighted, because we want to see the scheme carried out as much as anybody else. However, I must emphasise this. I must somehow protect my flank. The reason why we are putting this scheme into our programme, if all goes well, is that we consider it to be a sufficiently urgent scheme. I would not like the idea to get around that any hon. Member who happens to have a pet road scheme that his local authority wants to put in the programme has only to initiate an Adjournment debate and I will necessarily be in a position to stand at the Dispatch Box and give the same answer. Certainly we feel that this is a scheme which on its merits, as my hon. Friend said, deserves to go into the programme if it is possible to do it. We shall be able to do that in the coming financial year.

10.51 p.m.

Mr. W. A. Wilkins: It is a poor heart that never rejoices, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn)

and all the other hon. Members representing Bristol constituencies would wish to express thanks to the Minister for his reconsideration of this matter and what I think we may regard as a satisfactory promise for the near future.
I have been interested in this problem for a very long time. We have made many representations and visits to Ministries. I believe that this is a wise decision, despite the fact that it happens to apply to my city. My reason for believing that is that, although we are engaged on a very large trunk road programme throughout the country, it still remains a fact that it increases the congestion which arises in cities and towns through which the traffic has to pass.
When this road is completed it will be a considerable help in carrying the north-south and north-south-west traffic which is almost obliged to pass through Bristol. Therefore, the statement made by the Parliamentary Secretary will be welcomed by all hon. Members who represent Bristol constituencies. I am sure that the Chamber of Commerce and the City Council would expect us to express their gratitude also for the Minister's reconsideration and the promise that he has made to us for the future.

10.53 p.m.

Mr. Wedgwood Benn: In the few moments remaining in the debate, may I add my thanks to those of other hon. Members for the welcome response we have had today? It will be much appreciated. It will make a big difference. We are encouraged to go on with the Bedminster Bridge duplication and the Cumberland Basin scheme, and we shall be coming back in the hope that with the pressure, not of our numbers, but the pressure that comes from the strength of our case, we shall carry the Parliamentary Secretary and his right hon. Friend forward into the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at six minutes to Eleven o'clock.